


The Future Says Now

by Page161of180



Series: Save Queliot, Save the World [2]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alice POV, Alice's future daughter, F/F, F/M, Families of Choice, Family, Growing Up, Happy endings abound, Love, M/M, Marriage, Original Characters - Freeform, Parenthood, References to Depression, Time Travel, accepting yourself, and Alice's future husband, and all the hard work it requires, because their stories aren't ending, because why would it be, branches off from canon after 4x10, but more like happy beginnings really, but no actual major character death, grieving/mourning a major character, more details in the notes, not consistent with the season 4 finale, of the timey-wimey variety, references to canon loss of a child, specifically Quentin and Eliot and Fen's future daughter, the complicated emotions provoked by saving the love of your ex's life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-06-29 07:58:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 72,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19825858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Page161of180/pseuds/Page161of180
Summary: When Alice saw the figure standing there, her first, improbable thought, was Eliot. But, no-- that wasn’t-- it was a young woman. Younger than Alice, even, probably. She had on leather boots that went up to her thighs over leather leggings, and a long, drapey-- Renaissance Fair-style (Fillorian, she hissed inside, you know it’s Fillorian) blouse. Her thick black hair was pushed back over one shoulder and her eyes--“Holy shit,” the girl-- woman-- said under her breath, her mouth curling into an uncanny almost-grin, as Alice stared like an idiot.“Alice Quinn,” she said suddenly, straightening up to her full height-- taller than Alice. “I’m Quentin Coldwater’s daughter from the future,” she said, like she’d rehearsed it-- that was the easier part for Alice to focus on, the delivery. “And I need you to help me save my family.”Or: Alice saves Queliot, and saves the world. And just maybe figures out who she's always been.





	1. I. NOW

**Author's Note:**

> When I started putting together the outline for this piece, I wrote a note in the margin of my journal that said "oh no, this is a novel." That observation turned out to be-- entirely accurate. This story clocks in at about 70,000 words total. The story is fully written (because I have never figured out how to post as I go, given that I can't seem to write one sentence without changing five previous sentences), and will be updated on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for the next couple weeks. I'm posting the first two chapters at once, because they're quite a bit shorter than the rest-- more of a teaser/set up for the story to come, really. 
> 
> The story to come is from Alice's point of view, and spans multiple points in Alice's timeline (and Quentin's and Eliot's). The most basic summary is that Alice works with Quentin and Eliot's daughter from the future to save Fillory, but I think really the story is about the way that people grow, both within themselves and together. Although the story is from Alice's point of view and deals in large measure with her ongoing efforts to discover who she is and make peace with the things she's done, I think the heart of this story is Quentin and Eliot (and Alice's relationship to Quentin and Eliot, both individually and as a couple). (If you're curious as to how that can be true when Q and El don't appear 'on screen' in the first two chapters, I promise they show up in chapter 3. After that, there's no getting rid of them.) In particular, it's a story about Quentin and Eliot, and the ways they try to take care of each other-- sometimes well, sometimes poorly-- and the way their love affects the people around them. It's also a story about them growing old together, because why they hell should they not?
> 
> On that note, I suppose I must say a note about show canon. This story is not compliant with the end of season 4; it branches off after about 4x10. The events of this story follow after the events of the first story in this series (which I recommend reading first), which imagines an episode 4x11 in which, instead of Alice and Quentin going back to Brakebills South to do Mayakovsky's spell, the whole gang goes to do a spell that gets the Monster out of Eliot. (Oh, yeah-- and the Monster has no sister in this universe. Because if the show had no intention of doing anything with that thread, I feel no compunction to honor it.) All of the foregoing is to say that Quentin is alive at all points in this story. That said, his mental state at the end of season 4, and the way Eliot worries about it, is a major part of later chapters.
> 
> Finally, about that 'no actual major character death tag.' Especially for the first few chapters, we see characters mourning a major character. I promise you, there is not *actually* any major character death in this story, despite all appearances to the contrary. If you want more than my guarantee of an uplifting ending, please see detailed spoilers in the end notes. Up here, I'll just say that the references to grief and mourning here aren't intended to be gratuitous. Instead, I think that thread of the story is important to the story's recurring themes about learning how to love someone enough to be okay if you can't keep them anymore-- and are also a way for me to continue thumbing my nose at how the show chose to end season 4. 
> 
> Okay, final final note: the seed of this story is a short piece I posted a few months back called The Future Says Hi. I think of that story as basically the unaired pilot for this much longer piece. 
> 
> Thank you so much for joining me on this twisty-turny, timey-wimey adventure. It's very close to my heart.
> 
> (P.S. I'm sorry for basically ignoring everything that's happened on this website for the last two months while I tried to wrench this story out of my chest. I'm so excited to read everything you all have been posting! I owe you lots of comments!)

I. NOW

_Library Main Branch, The Neitherlands - July 2047_

If someone had told Alice, when she was twenty-four years old, that of all the conversations in her life in which someone spit out the phrase “ _do you even_ hear _yourself, Mom_ ” while glaring furiously from behind dark-framed glasses, less than _half_ would involve _her_ hissing it at _Stephanie_ \--

Well. Twenty-four-year-old Alice would have been skeptical. For a multitude of reasons.

_Although_ , she thought, remembering this past Mother’s Day, she and Stephanie still had opportunities to even out the score. Alice could still taste the third glass of chardonnay she’d downed while hiding in Stephanie’s kitchen (beside that _damned_ orchid), while Stephanie gushed over Charlie being the first _knowledge_ student in the family and Alice wondered how fucked a mother she would be if she pointed out that, as proud as they all were of Charlie, _knowledge_ students didn’t exactly have a monopoly on intellectual acumen, given that a mere _phosphoromancy_ student was now the _custodian of all magical texts in the known realms_.

Alice could use another glass of Stephanie’s chilled chardonnay right now, actually. Even more than that, she wanted Greg’s hand light against the small of her back, his undertone asking “so how’s everything in here?” as he gently took the mostly-empty glass from her hand, only to refill it without a word when Stephanie steered the conversation back to her seniors’ tantric magic retreat in Barcelona. 

Alice grabbed the key pendant she wore around her neck instead, pressing the pad of her thumb into the boxy little teeth. 

“I _understand_ the importance of the research you’re trying to do,” she told Lucy, keeping her voice carefully even, and digging the metal harder into her skin to compensate. “The purpose of the screening system isn’t to _block_ this kind of work. It’s just to-- maintain certain-- precautions.”

The strategic disadvantages of arguing with her children (well, arguing with Lucy-- she and Charlie didn’t really argue, not about anything more personal than Debrovsky or Chubinga’s formula for light diffraction in nonprismatic realities) was one of the few challenges of motherhood that Alice _hadn’t_ obsessively pre-anticipated during the nine months she’d gotten huge and terrified waiting for Lucy’s arrival. 

(Stephanie had been less than no help in calming Alice’s new-mother paranoia, obviously, except for the startling kiss she’d placed just above the bridge of Alice’s glasses the first time she held Lucy at the hospital. Greg had-- _oh_ , Alice could still feel the whorls of his ear and the cool plastic of his glasses pressed against the overstretched skin of her belly, the bottom points of his tattoo visible on his forearm as he traced patterns across her, while calmly reciting the list of reasons they’d prepared, why it made sense to do this. But even still, he’d been as much a clueless novice as she was. Her only friends with kids, at the time, had been Quentin and-- and Q had been-- well, he’d been too weird with her still, back then, to offer anything other than unhelpful platitudes. It had been-- it had been Quentin’s other half ( _better half_ , she could still hear him interjecting, bored and easy, even though it was the exact opposite of what he actually believed), who’d made her feel the most okay, placing a virgin daiquiri beside her and bringing her swollen feet into his lap, while they both watched Quentin fuss with baby Theo’s sunhat while assorted Fillorian nobles-- human and otherwise-- cooed over the new princess. _You won’t make any of the same mistakes your parents made_ , he’d said, digging his thumb into the arch of her foot. _You’ll make completely fucking new ones_.) 

Alice’s stomach clenched, like it always did, remembering. 

Not the point. 

Losing arguments with Lucy-- _that_ was the point, and the constant reality, honestly, since Lucy had been about twelve years old. Part of the problem was that none of Alice’s typical approaches to winning felt _right_ directed against the soft, good-smelling little lump that used to lie for hours in her arms, needing Alice in a way that, for the first few years at least, had been more uncomplicated than Alice had known wanting could be-- before Greg, anyway. 

They _still_ didn’t feel right, even now that the soft, good-smelling little lump was twenty-three years old, with six watches strapped from wrist to elbow, and a theory on horomancy that was going to break the magical world, or maybe just break the world(s), period.

“You can skip the dispassionate librarian speech,” Lucy retorted, crossing one watch-studded arm over the other against her dark blue henley. (The clothes, Alice assumed, fighting the urge to tug at the hem of her dress, could only be a reaction against Alice herself. And Alice now was practically _business-like_ compared to Alice at Lucy’s age. She couldn’t even imagine how deep into grunge Lucy would have gone to compensate for all of those scalloped collars.) 

“You know that if any other magician came in here with this prospectus, you would give them the access they needed,” Lucy continued, voice brittle.

She wasn’t _wrong_ about that; in fact there was an objective and comprehensively regulated process to prove that she was _right_ about that, the results of which were burning a hole in the top drawer of Alice’s desk. (The hedges, the Order, and Fillory all voted yes. Only the Brakebills rep had voted no, but Dean Fogg had some kind of personal vendetta against horomancy that Alice had never taken the time to entertain.)

The fact that Lucy wasn’t wrong about Alice’s-- fine, _meddling-_ \- in the institutional review process was another reason why this fight-- and the variations on it they’d been having for months now-- were so infuriating. Lucy wasn’t wrong about _any_ of it-- probably. Her work was-- Alice had been hearing Lucy bat around these ideas, with Charlie and with Julia and (less abstractly and a lot more worryingly) with Theo, at family dinners for years now. But actually reading her work, the clarity of her perspective, the intricacy of the spellwork, the elegance of her thinking-- Alice might not have had a particular specialty in horomancy, but she could recognize analytical quality. ( _Brilliance_ , more accurately. _Genius_.) And Theo’s work was heads and shoulders above anything that the discipline had produced since Sonia Kikuno. 

Sonia Kikuno, who had died, horribly, from mercury poisoning before she was sixty.

“It’s not as though anyone is using _cinnabar_ anymore,” Lucy said, somewhere between affronted and patronizing, demonstrating once again the uncanny ability she had sometimes to guess at Alice’s thoughts. Alice had found Lucy’s perceptiveness so jarring when Lucy was young, that she’d actually asked Penny and Pearl Sutherland _both_ to screen her for telepathic ability when she was fourteen, so that she could start learning to shield early, if needed. It turned out it was just _Alice_ that Lucy could read like a book, for reasons that Alice tried not to think about too closely. 

“You know perfectly well that chemical exposure is the _least_ of the risks associated with horomancy,” Alice returned, tugging slightly at the key around her neck, not hard enough to break the delicate cord. “This is incredibly powerful, incredibly complex magic. Your whole theory depends on the caster being able to contact the same group of people at two different points on a timeline. If a single wrong person strolls into a room unexpectedly, the effects on _this_ timestream alone would be--”

“The Library has cleared twelve horomancy teams for restricted access in the past two years, and _you_ know _that_ perfectly well.” Lucy’s blue eyes burned behind her glasses, almost the same shape as Greg’s, yet nothing like his in their effect. She crossed her arms more tightly, pulling into herself, deepening her control, the way she always did when she was mad. “The only difference is that this time it’s _me_.”

Despite her unflinching posture, Lucy’s voice broke on the last word, finally revealing something more personal than professional offense.

_You won’t make any of the same mistakes your parents did. You’ll make completely fucking new ones._

Alice pushed up from her desk with a sigh and stepped around to face Lucy, who was looking stubbornly at her crossed arms. Alice let go of the key around her neck and ran both hands through Lucy’s bangs. Lucy had chopped off most of her straight, dark hair a few years ago, but what was left was still soft and fine, the way it had been when she was a baby.

“ _Lu_ ,” Alice tried, gentle in a way that twenty-four-year-old Alice also would have regarded skeptically. “I just-- I want you to be _safe_ . I want that _so much_.”

It was true. It was almost the truest thing Alice could have said, other than that there was one part of Alice that would take Lucy, _safe_ , over Lucy, _a celebrated genius_ , in a heartbeat. Lucy seemed to bring it out in her, that particular part, no matter how hard Alice had worked to bring it into balance.

Alice brought her hand flat against Lucy’s temple. She pursed her lips for a moment, an old gesture from that old part of her, before saying, “You know, your Uncle Charlie--”

Lucy huffed and pulled away from Alice’s caress. “It’s not _Uncle Charlie_ you’re afraid that I’m like,” she said unhappily, still not quite able to meet Alice’s eyes, pushing her glasses back on her nose in a way that Alice’s own fingers recognized. 

Alice had another flash of a memory, suddenly-- one that she couldn’t quite place this time. It was _him_ , again, looking younger than would have made sense given the context-- but maybe her default was to think of him young and intimidatingly elegant, insisting that _friends don’t let friends drink Long Island iced tea_ . Alice could _see_ him watching Theo-- twenty-something and equally intimidating to Alice, somehow, even though Alice had watched Quentin dab spit-up peas off her baby chin, more than once-- as she looked down her distinguished nose at the man she resembled so strongly, her hazel eyes deeply unimpressed, a few wild dark curls falling rakishly across her face. “ _Disconcerting_ ,” he’d said, eyes darting to someone-- _Quentin_ , inevitably, _where else did he ever look_?-- for confirmation. 

Shaking off the memory, Alice reached out to Lucy, but second-guessed herself part-way through the gesture, curling both hands in against her chest, feeling closer to twenty-four-year-old Alice than she had in a while. 

The movement caught Lucy’s attention and her mouth twisted in annoyance, before she stalked away toward the door. She paused with a hand on the knob, her back to Alice, one of her checkerboard sneakers untied. 

Alice _knew_ , with a maternal intuition that she hadn’t believed existed for the first thirty-ish years of her life, that whatever Lucy was going to say next would be devastating.

As usual, her daughter didn’t disappoint.

“How many _more_ people have to pay for the fact that you still don’t _trust_ yourself?” she asked coldly, showing off that ability to read Alice’s mind one more time, before she stormed out, slamming the door behind her.

Alice reached for the corner of her desk as the door slammed, her other hand going instinctively to the key at her neck again. She stood there, unmoving, _remembering_ , for untold minutes. Maybe more than minutes. 

With a tight swallow, she finally pushed one foot in front of the other, making her way to where her purse was tucked against the bottom corner of her desk. She wasn’t going to get anything else done tonight. And she wanted-- _home_ , she wanted Greg, and spaghetti night, and the fact that he would _wait_ , until after she’d stripped off her dress and washed her face and buttoned up her cotton pajamas and curled up next to him, to tell her-- calm but unflinching-- that she was being unfair to Lucy.

( _I want-- I want to make a system where no one person has to decide who has access_ , she’d said, gently changing the bandages on Greg’s hands. _And where anyone can get access_ , she added quietly. When she dared to catch his eyes, they were shining behind his glasses.)

She wanted to be home with her husband and to not think about what Quentin did on nights like this, when he felt the same way. 

Alice had pulled the bulging white leather bag onto her shoulder and had lifted her hands to do the tut for the light when the door to her office suddenly swung open, even more dramatically than Lucy had shut it. 

There in the doorframe were hazel eyes so familiar Alice almost would have gasped, after the night’s unexpected memories, if Theo weren’t already moving into the office, unmistakably herself, and grabbing Alice’s hands in her own. 

“ _Aunt Alice_ !” she gasped. She looked and sounded like she’d run here; she was brimming with the puppyish energy that she’d learned from the _other_ two people who’d made her, the ones not responsible for her eyes. “Oh. Good. You already have your bag. Let’s go, come on!”

Theo gave a tug on Alice’s hands, but Alice planted her feet. “Theo, what’s going on? Where do you need to go?”

“It’s where _you_ need to go,” Theo returned. She squeezed Alice’s hands one more time, then gave a Cheshire grin that was all-- _him_ . “ _You_ are going to save my dad.”

  
  


_Modesto, California - July 2019_

It probably wasn’t _right_ , using Sheila’s house for this. Alice knew that. Or. She _thought_ that, at least. She didn’t have the greatest internal sense, anymore, of what was right and what was-- not right. 

Or, she did have an internal sense-- she was building it back up, anyway-- but she wasn’t always sure if she should-- rely on it. 

She’d been working on it-- second-guessing her instincts less, since her experience confronting herself in the mirror realm. It was hard, though, figuring out which of her conflicting thoughts on every minor _thing_ related to magic was the instinct that she should trust, and which was the impulse that she should avoid. 

After she’d come back from being a niffin-- Or, rather, after she’d come back from being a niffin and stopped fighting the idea that human morality should still apply to her, she’d defaulted to assuming that it was the part of her that always wanted to _try it, learn it, see if you can do it_ , that she should suppress. That had gone-- _awfully_ , culminating in the disaster of the key quest, and the Monster unleashed on her-- on Quentin and _his_ friends, and Alice herself a fugitive from justice, or from the Library’s version of it, anyway.

Since confronting her ( _egomaniacal arrogant power-hungry)_ ambitious half in the mirror realm, she’d been trying it the other way around, assuming that the squeaky, small, scared-mouse voice in her head was the one to ignore. It was going-- _better_ , she guessed. The voice wasn’t all that squeaky-small, sometimes, though. It had been-- it had been _everywhere_ , booming through every cell when she’d gone to Brakebills South a few months ago, at Quentin’s request, to help Julia perform a ritual that none of them understood in the slightest, that predated even the things she’d seen as a niffin, and that had been given to them by a book-person that referred to itself in the third person and had unknowable motivations. She’d sucked it up and done the spell, though, carving sigils she didn’t know into an ancient being after Quentin had tricked it through a series of false promises she still didn’t fully understand, to submit to a ritual that would _get you your body back, yeah, totally_. 

(It hadn’t really been the Monster’s unconscious body, that she’d carved the sigils into, though, had it? Just like it hadn’t really been the Monster’s body whose fingers Quentin had stroked while she did it, somehow wincing every time the knife touched skin, even though he was looking pointedly away and couldn’t possibly know.)

Anyway, she’d done the crazy, dangerous spell with Julia, and _that_ had turned out-- 

(Quentin, _her_ _Q_ , pressed against Eliot’s naked chest, practically shaking with relief, rolling his forehead back and forth against Eliot’s skin, like he was greeting his _husband_ home from war)

\-- fine. 

What she’d done then, though, she’d done for-- for _them_. 

( _You did it for Q-- not that he even noticed_ , part of her sniffed-- the manic-niffin-dreamgirl part, by the sound of it. Was she supposed to take its relationship advice, too, she wondered? The steady stream of reminders that _Q_ barely _unclenched his asshole around you when you had your tongue on his fuzzy little balls, but one touch of Eliot’s hand on his neck and it was like there were no bones left in his body, well except for_ one _, anyway_? Or was it just the magic advice, that she wasn’t supposed to second-guess anymore?)

Ignoring the mouse part of her, listening to the niffin part-- she could make herself do it, so far, when it was at the behest of other people. (When it was for _Q_ , his voice flat and desperate on the phone that Kady had handed Alice when she’d all but kicked in Sheila’s door to find her, and even sadder when she’d heard it in person at Brakebills South, that sorrow louder even than the distrust of _her_ practically buzzing out of his every pore.) But when no one was pleading with her, and it was just _herself_ , and the possibility of expanding her own control (or her own illusion of it), she still didn’t, _couldn’t,_ just trust the _Alice Knows Best_ part of her.

(She’d been-- four, she thought, or about that, the first time she remembered Stephanie saying it just like that, rolling her eyes-- _well, I guess Alice knows best_. Daniel had winked at Alice, but hadn’t disagreed. Charlie had-- he’d taken her to the upstairs study window, because you could see the butterfly cocoons on the Bradford pear from there.)

Alice shook her cramped fingers out in frustration as she lost the tracer in the glass of water on the table in front of her. After the branch bombing, the Library had plugged the leak Alice and Sheila had blown in the local pipe system, and brought the level of ambient in Modesto even lower than it had been before, which made doing any casting at all a _bitch_. Some traces-- _just_ traces, really-- remained in the city’s water, though, since the spell she and Sheila had done to remove the lead. It made it just _barely_ possible to do some spellwork that would be completely impossible with the depleted ambient alone, if you used the water to amplify. Which was why Alice had been straining her eyes for an hour and a half, trying to read flow levels on a map of all the pipes in Northern California, Oregon, and Washington, that was imposed on a surface with the diameter of a keepsake Disneyland glass. 

_You wouldn’t need to be doing this_ , she reminded herself, _if you’d taken Zelda up on her offer_. 

Zelda had come to Alice, here in Modesto, with Sheila, a few weeks after Alice got back from Brakebills South. She hadn’t seen Zelda since the two of them, Harriet, and Kady had stalled in their attempts to figure out the mystery of the Library’s missing magic allocations. Zelda and Kady had struck out searching for Everett’s book, which would either confirm or deny ( _or confirm_ ) Everett’s real motivations. In the absence of hard proof against her mentor, Zelda had grown squeamish about their plans, and Kady had washed her hands of the cooperative approach not long after. Still, the hints they _had_ managed to uncover during their team-up had been enough to sow doubts for Zelda, or so she’d said when she’d sat primly on the edge of Sheila’s mother’s armchair, a cup of Lipton tea that Alice had made with the leftover bottled water in one hand. 

Apparently, Zelda said, _Quentin_ had gone to the mirror realm two weeks before, to deposit four stones trapping the separated parts of a mistake of the gods into the seam between worlds. (Alice had known that part. She’d been the one to tell him where he could find the seam, when the Binder had been less than forthcoming about the actual mechanics of the solution he’d offered in exchange for Julia becoming a demigoddess. She had been on the verge of offering to go with him, before Penny took her back to Modesto, but just as she’d been about to open her mouth, Eliot had groaned and tossed on his pile of blankets in the abandoned classroom they’d been treating as homebase, and Quentin had gone to him instantly, kneeling at his side, and the moment was lost.) When Quentin had arrived there, Everett had been there, too, with evident interest in the stones. There had nearly been an-- _altercation_ , Zelda called it, but Penny had been able to transport both himself and Quentin to safety, while Everett returned unharmed to the Library. 

“It’s-- it sounds _unlike_ Everett,” Zelda had said, frowning as she put the teacup back in its saucer. “But I’ve always considered Quentin-- _trustworthy_.”

She widened her eyes behind her winged glasses, like she was looking to Alice for confirmation. _You wouldn’t think that if you’d heard him tell you it didn’t mean anything that he fucked his best friend, only to nearly rip the world apart trying to save him not two years later_ , Alice had wanted to snort. 

“In any event,” Zelda had continued. “I’d like to have-- as many perspectives on the ground at the Library as possible, to help-- assess the state of affairs, however it-- may evolve. And Alice, I’d-- I’d very much value _your_ judgment in particular. I believe I can secure a-- _commutation_ of your sentence, in exchange for your service.” 

Alice must have recoiled or actually snorted or _something_ at that point, because Sheila had leaned forward where she’d been sitting quietly on the sofa, in her too-sophisticated suit. 

“Honey, it would be good for the Library to have you there, but it would also be so good for you,” she’d said, putting a hand on Alice’s wrist. “There’s so much to _learn_ there.”

Alice’s stomach had sunk into her heels, then, and she wasn’t sure if it was at the thought that Sheila might have read her book and found out about the dying lampreys and the little fireworks and thought that dangling forbidden knowledge in her face would-- would _entice_ Alice. Or if it was just that this person that Alice had been starting to think of as the first _friend_ she’d managed to make since Q knew so little about what she really was.

Either way, Alice had said no, which was why she was stuck scrying through novelty glassware to keep indirect tabs on what the Order was doing. 

She’d just stood up to dump the water out of the glass and put it in the top rack of the old Maytag dishwasher, along with the three bowls and three spoons that made up the sum total of Alice’s non-spell-related dishes for the week, when a sudden banging on the front door made her drop it. 

Alice stood for a moment staring at the shattered glass on the floor, the Mickey Mouse ears split across two separate shards, before she pulled herself together and reached for the baseball bat that Sheila kept in the umbrella holder by the sliding glass backdoor. For good measure, she pulled another glass from the shelf by the sink, and filled it with water from the tap, before edging her way to the front door. She placed the water carefully on the entryway catch-all table, within arm’s reach, before she yanked the door open.

When Alice saw the figure standing there, her first, improbable thought, was _Eliot_ . But, no-- that wasn’t-- it was a young woman. Younger than Alice, even, probably. She had on leather boots that went up to her thighs over leather leggings, and a long, drapey-- _Renaissance Fair_ -style ( _Fillorian_ , she hissed inside, _you know it’s Fillorian_ ) blouse. Her thick black hair was pushed back over one shoulder and _her eyes_ \--

“Holy shit,” the girl-- woman-- said under her breath, her mouth curling into an uncanny almost-grin, as Alice stared like an idiot. 

Alice could feel that she was holding the baseball bat more loosely than she _should_ be. She took a half-step to the side to make up for it, putting the door between more of her body and this-- stranger. 

The woman reached out and grabbed the door, like she was scared Alice was going to close it.

“ _Alice Quinn_ ,” she said suddenly, straightening up to her full height-- taller than Alice. “I’m Quentin Coldwater’s daughter from the future,” she said, like she’d rehearsed it-- that was the easier part for Alice to focus on, the delivery. “And I need you to help me save my family.”


	2. II. THEN

II. THEN

_ Whitespire Castle, Fillory _ \-  _ March 2047 [Earth-date equivalency] _

The moment the High King rose from her chair, grave and tired, Alice stood up, too, and nodded. Once to Fen herself. Once to Hand of the High King Margo, wearing the brooch that she and Quentin had designed, giggling, a million years ago, while drooling over Peter Dinklage. And once, reluctantly, to Quentin, sitting in-- in the chair to Fen’s immediate left. 

Alice walked calmly out of the throne room and down the hall to the base of the westernmost spire, not lingering to see if Quentin would stay and want to-- talk. To  _ her _ . 

Part of her  _ ached  _ to sit with him, to take his hand and say how  _ good  _ it was to see him and how much she'd missed him, how much she missed  _ both  _ of them. But it was so hard to talk to him, now, as selfish as that was. It was as hard now as it had been-- well. After the  _ first  _ time they’d had to try to get Fillory’s magic back, although for unbelievably different reasons. 

It was sickening, almost, feeling this awkward and cold with him, again. To push through all the bullshit from the first years they’d known each other and gotten who they were to each other so wrong, and to spend twenty years thinking of him as her best friend and  _ meaning  _ it, and then suddenly to feel once again like that uncertain girl, too overwhelmed with trying to keep herself afloat in the bottomless sea of all his barely-comprehensible (to  _ her _ ) emotions, to do more than offer him a wary smile before rushing down the hall and away. 

It hurt even  _ more  _ to realize exactly how much their becoming real friends, not just uncomfortable exes, had depended on the person that, at the time, she probably would have said was the reason they could  _ never  _ be friends. 

Alice stopped abruptly, halfway up the spire, and pressed a hand against her chest, over her key pendant. She looked down, ignoring the way her chin wanted to wobble. There was a chip in one of her iron-gray nails, she noticed. 

(That smug just-barely-a-smile, as he let his eyes travel from ballet flats to glasses.  _ And here _ I  _ thought becoming head librarian would mean that it was all victory rolls and red nail polish from here on out. Oh, don’t get me wrong-- it’s not a criticism. In fact, I would consider it a personal favor to the longevity of my pseudo-marriage if you  _ never  _ wore victory rolls or red _ \--)

_ Damn Fillory _ , Alice made herself think, clearing her head. Advanced enough to have a permanent, direct portal to the Main Branch at the top of one of the palace’s two hundred spires ( _ for now, anyway _ ); fetishized-Dark-Ages enough not to let the Library build them an elevator to go with it. 

( _ An--  _ ehller-vader _ would undermine the defensive advantage of putting the portal at the top of the spire _ , Fen had told Alice courteously but firmly, tripping over the unfamiliar word, when Alice had first come to propose the portal (and the board seat), during the early days of  _ We’re Not  _ That  _ Kind of Order Anymore  _ outreach. Alice had just barely restrained herself, back then, from saying  _ I’m putting one in my  _ home _ , where my  _ children  _ live; what do you think I’m going to let come through?  _ But she couldn’t say that, could she? Not with Margo there, staring daggers at her, and Quentin, with his gaze drifting into the middle distance every few seconds, like he couldn’t stop it.  _ Eliot _ , though, had smiled at her, weakly, from his seat at Fen’s immediate left and said, breezy even though he grimaced every time his ribs moved,  _ Really it’s just that the anachronism would be too much for Q’s fanboy heart to bear _ . Q had winced, full-body, at the word ‘heart.’)

Alice’s own heart was hammering beneath the buttons of her blouse. 

_ It’s just these damn stairs _ , she told herself, as she swept both hands over her cheeks roughly, ignoring the way she knew it always accentuated her crow’s feet, when her concealer smudged. She adjusted the bag on her shoulder, overstuffed as always with books, and not one that could actually  _ help  _ them.

_ And whose fault was that? _

Alice straightened her back and made herself walk forward. One more turn and then she’d pass the sole window in the spire, and then two more turns and she’d reach the door back to her office. There would be research-access applications to sort through and correspondence to answer and probably a hundred or more literal bugs from the newest upgrade to the herbalism section filing system to squash. She could manage that. And, if-- it was Saturday, after all, back on not-Fillory. She could take the portal through to Brakebills (although she’d have to avoid Julia’s office and its mess of crumbling scrolls and its even more delicate questions of  _ did you see him? How is he? _ ). She could see if Greg had made enough progress on his writing to stop for lunch. (He almost certainly had, of course, unless students had stopped in for extra help. His diligence was really impressive.) She could sit on the edge of his desk and actually smile, around one of the awful tuna sandwiches that the cafeteria still sold on weekends, and maybe he’d put his hand on her knee-- waiting, still, after all this time, to see what she’d want-- and she could sit in his lap and bring his hand where she really needed it and remind herself, in that place she’d been so lost and unhappy once, what it felt like, being alive, being in love, wanting to give and not just wanting to stay afloat.

When Alice reached the window, though, there was a figure curled into the deep ledge seat, long legs bent at the knee, with the soles of her boots pressing into the stone. 

She looked like she’d been crying. 

“Theo?” Alice asked, stepping forward. She hesitated, briefly, but then placed a hand on Theo’s shoulder anyway. It was easier, with the kids, to know how to offer comfort.

“Aunt Alice.” Theo turned away from the glass and toward Alice, then smiled and sat up to make room for Alice on the ledge, wiping her eyes discreetly as she did. “Hey.”

Alice sat gingerly. “Hi. Are you--”

_ Okay?  _ Alice scoffed at herself.  _ How could she be? When it would be a year in three days _ .

But Theo was waving one hand dismissively. “Oh, you know. Just-- maintaining the aesthetic. Stare moodily out of isolated window. Check.”

God, the resemblance really was uncanny sometimes. And not just the physical one. Alice frowned. “Theo--”

“Seriously, Aunt Alice, it’s--” Theo cut her off, then sighed. “It’s not--  _ that _ . This is--” She paused again and laughed a little, seemingly at herself. “Matters of the heart.  _ Girl _ problems, actually. So, you know, pretty much the exact opposite of . . . “

She couldn’t quite say it,  _ who _ it was the exact opposite of. But Alice let her have her deflection, and simply smiled. 

Theo smiled back, sniffing once, before changing the topic. “So, I’m guessing Mom and Aunt Margo filled you in on the latest developments. The--”

“The crops are failing again,” Alice finished for her. “Yes, they-- and the rivers, too.”

Theo nodded again and looked out the window, at the land she was supposed to be ruling someday.  _ What would be left of it, if they couldn’t fix the magic this time _ ? 

“It’s the wellspring, right. Finally? I mean, we’ve known it was probably coming, since--”

Alice nodded, so that Theo wouldn’t have to finish the thought. “I think so. Yes.”

“No easy fix, I assume?” 

There was almost a joke in the way that Theo’s lip curled as she asked the mostly rhetorical question. One that somehow only heightened the sorrow painted across her angular features.

Alice sighed, feeling the useless weight of the bag in her lap. “Not yet. Maybe if we still had the books on exactly what spell Zelda used, back then . . . ”

“But we haven’t had  _ them _ for twenty years,” Theo finished for her, this time. “Well, maybe if Lucy hurries her ass up on this time-travel thing, we can all get ever-so-slightly less screwed.” 

She’d meant it as a joke, Alice thought-- mostly, anyway. But the thought of Lucy’s work-- and the burgeoning fight that she knew was coming over it ( _ Kady had already told her the hedges were going to approve the proposal. And Fen’s council had a thousand excited follow-up questions _ )-- made her uneasy. “Maybe,” she allowed, pushing her own concern down where Theo wouldn’t have to deal with it.

After a moment’s silence, Alice cleared her throat and said, “Your dad was there, too. At the meeting. He-- I hadn’t seen him at the last few meetings.”

Theo tipped her head to one side and smiled, just slightly,  _ so  _ much like-- “Yeah, he’s been doing a lot better lately. It was-- for a while there, it was-- pretty dark, honestly.”

Alice breathed out the stab of guilt she felt at that. She’d known, obviously, from Julia and Penny. She’d even gotten a few updates from Kady, who hadn’t set foot in Fillory in decades. 

When it happened, a year ago, she’d-- well, she hadn’t known what to expect, honestly. In the immediate aftermath ( _ the knowledge sitting heavy in her gut, as she watched the carriage approach _ ), Quentin had been like a ghost. ( _ I’m sorry _ , he’d told her.  _ He’d  _ told  _ her _ .) But later, at the-- when she’d seen Quentin,  _ there _ , after, he’d been-- well,  _ horrible.  _ Bereft and aching and  _ heartrending _ . But-- normal. 

_ Oh God _ , what a shitty, judgmental way to put it-- typical  _ Alice _ , even after all these years. Just-- she’d just meant that, he had been the way she would have expected  _ anyone  _ to be, after something like that, even if they  _ didn’t  _ have Q’s-- history. 

( _ My brain breaks sometimes _ , she could still see him saying, so young with all that floppy hair she had thought was so cute, his face clean-shaven.) 

It was only after a few months had gone by that-- well. Julia had said, while picking at adobo chicken (Greg’s mother had passive-aggressively given Alice the recipe back when she and Greg had gotten engaged, but Alice used it anyway, because  _ damn it _ , it really was good), that she thought it was something to do with realizing that this was the new normal now, that had tipped Quentin’s grieving into a spiral. But he recognized it, which was a good thing, Julia had insisted, while Penny placed a hand unobtrusively on hers. And he’d gone to see a healer about whether his meds needed re-evaluating. Because Fillory had surprisingly modern mental health facilities, of course it did. Because Eliot had--

Alice had tried to stay up-to-date, but she hadn’t visited, outside of her usual meetings with the High King’s council. Partly that was-- self-preservation. But also, Alice could recognize now, in a way that she didn’t when she was young, that her-- _energy_ , her _way_ of caring wasn’t-- it wasn’t necessarily _good_ , for Q. When he was in that place.

( _ Oh, God, no. Please. Let Julia handle the worst of the shoulder-crying. Or Fen.  _ The barest smirk.  _ I meant, be there for him-- in your way. When he’s ready _ .)

“I’m glad he’s doing better,” Alice told Theo, meaning it with her whole heart.

“Yeah,” Theo said lightly, with so much of that same damn  _ understatement  _ and those heartbreaking give-away eyes, “me, too.” 

“How are you holding up?” Theo added, after another moment’s silence. 

Alice jerked. “Me?”

That half-smile again.  _ How could Quentin stand it? _ “I know you two were close. In that whole,  _ he’s picking on me again, I’m telling Mom _ way.”

Alice’s chest lurched at that, the way it had while she was climbing the steps, and she grabbed for her necklace, hearing  _ oh, Quinn,  _ another  _ pair of saddle shoes, really?  _ and  _ quit pretending that you haven’t already solved it, and just tell us the answer so that Q can quit chewing his lip off. I’m very invested in that mouth _ , and behind that, softer and out of place,  _ don’t you-- forget about me _ . 

“You don’t-- God, you don’t need to be worrying about  _ me  _ right now,” she told Theo, after taking a steadying breath. 

Theo just raised an eyebrow. “Okay. Well, in that case. You should talk to Dad before you leave, you know. Since I’m guessing you avoided him earlier.”

Alice felt her face fall ( _ of course she knew _ ), but Theo pressed on. “I know that you were-- giving him space, or whatever. And I get why. Or, I think I do-- no one ever  _ tells _ me anything--”

“That’s because you’re--”

“A kid?” Theo snorted. “I’m twenty-four. What were all of  _ you  _ doing at twenty-four?”

_ Hurting your dad, and getting hurt by him, and fighting a monster, and dying, and doing unspeakable things, and then coming back and hurting your dad more _ , was the answer. But Theo knew it, or the outlines of it, anyway. That’s why she’d said what she said. So instead, Alice reached for her hand, and held it the same way she did to Lucy and to Charlie sometimes. 

“You’re  _ his  _ kid,” she said gently. “And it’s not your job to take care of your parents. It’s our job to take care of all of you.” 

Theo held her gaze evenly, before looking away. When she looked back, she looked impish, like when she and Lucy were six and five and thought they’d found a way to exploit their stupid parents into giving them what they wanted. (They were right more often than they should have been-- especially when they made Q their mark.)

“Well, in that case, would you do  _ me _ a solid and go see him?” she asked. Her amber eyes quickly went serious again, though, and she added words that Alice had heard so many times, from someone else: “Your friendship really is important to him.” 

There was no question, really, what Alice would do, at that point. If there had ever  _ been _ a real question, in the first place, or whether she’d just been-- treading water, avoiding the inevitable. She patted Theo’s hand one more time and stood. She had just turned to make her way back down the winding stairs, when Theo spoke once more, low and urgent. 

“Just so you know, I’m going to figure out what’s going on with Fillory’s magic, and I’m going to fix it,” she said. “Whatever it takes.” 

The mom in Alice wanted to say  _ you’ll do no such thing, young lady _ . But when Alice looked at Theo, striking and resolute with the Fillorian landscape visible in the window behind her, she could only see another young monarch on a quest to save this place. Alice had stood in the way, then. 

This time, she nodded. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT TIME: Alice puts the pieces together; hello, father(s).


	3. III. NOW

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alice solves one problem, then discovers a much, much bigger one (other than how to place nicely with her ex).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much, everyone, for your wonderful, encouraging comments on the first chapters! We're back in 2047/2019 with this third chapter. (As you'll see, odd and even chapters alternate between the main threads of the story in 2047/2019 and interstitial moments that help reveal what happened in the years between. The monster length of this chapter is fairly representative of the main-thread chapters going forward. Interstitial chapters are about a third as long.) 
> 
> As mentioned in previous notes, Theo's dads finally show up in this chapter. A quick warning that 2019 Alice is not in a great place with said dads (Quentin in particular). She has some pretty ugly things to say in this chapter-- about him, about Eliot, about their relationship, and about herself. Some of it may be cruel but fair; most of it is cruel and wrong and hurtful. I would only say that growing up requires a place to grow up from.

III. NOW

_Library Main Branch, The Neitherlands - July 2047_

As soon as the words-- _you’re going to save my dad_ \-- came out of Theo’s mouth, Alice’s insides lurched.

“ _What happened_ ?” she asked immediately, hearing her voice snap into what Greg called _Library-mode_ . All hard edges and _solve-this_ . “ _Theo_. What happened to Quentin? Where is he?”

(It wasn’t an insult, when Greg said it-- _Library-mode_. It didn’t mean _cold Library bitch_ , the way that she could hear the Junior Librarians whisper in the stacks sometimes, when they thought she was still in her office-- or the way she’d hissed at herself, for _years_ , for that matter. It meant that she was _choosing_ to listen to the part of her that said _fix this now, you stupid little mouse_ , and saving the part that said _oh God, oh God, what if I fail_ him _, too_ for later.)

“ _Theo_ ,” Alice insisted again, punctuating it with a squeeze to Theo’s hands, still gripping hers. Centering both of them, as they stood there in the doorway of Alice’s immaculate office. 

Not that Theo seemed to need much centering. Her eyes were still boring into Alice’s-- intense, but smiling. _Beaming_ , actually. As Alice stared back, feeling the faint lines over the bridge of her nose furrow even deeper than usual, she saw Theo’s own dark eyebrows gradually begin to pull together.

“What do you mean what happened to--” Theo started to ask, then stopped. She tilted her head at Alice, in that way she had ( _that way he’d had_ ), and then her eyes widened suddenly, and she--

_Laughed_.

“ _Jesus_ ,” Alice muttered, as Theo almost bent double, using their still-joined hands to pull Theo over to the desk, and sit her down on the edge, careful to situate her away from the sparkling glass animals that weighted that day’s incoming and outgoing messages.

(When this had been Zelda’s office, there had been a fireplace, and oil paintings, and dark wood. Alice preferred bright fluorescents, and glass sculptures and white leather-- and wished more than almost anything that she’d changed _more_ of the things that Zelda had done with the place, _sooner_.)

“Theo,” she repeated again, softer this time, as she brought her hand up to Theo’s wild curls. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, or it had been, at one point; it was mostly fly-aways now. That was-- _strange_ , for Theo, who put as much _effort_ into looking dangerous and devil-may-care as-- well, as anyone, maybe. ( _Anyone left_.) 

“What’s going on?” Alice asked, pulling out the struggling rubber hair tie, the same simple black kind that Quentin used to wear around his wrist, and smoothing her hand down over the curls that sprang out, the way she’d tried to do for Lucy just a few minutes ago. It was easier to speak gently, to let out more of her mouse side, now that the initial burst of grim panic that had seized Alice’s own throat was-- _gradually_ \-- loosening its fingers. Whatever was happening here, it wasn’t-- it couldn’t be-- Theo was _laughing_ , still. And it wasn’t hysterical laughing, or pitch-black _of course he’s dying, why the fuck wouldn’t he be?_ laughing. 

(It had been two decades, and Alice could still hear the low, hopeless sound Quentin had made, when Lipson had said _irreversible . . . and unstoppable_ . Could still see him cover it with his hand and hunch over, pressing his knuckles into the tall infirmary windows, while Eliot stared mournfully from the bed, looking like he’d give anything for the physical strength to stand up and pull Quentin’s practically _vibrating_ body into his arms. Could still feel the hot shame of wishing she could dissolve into the floor tiles, of thinking she might have even _tried_ to, if she hadn’t been six-months pregnant with Charlie at the time.)

_This_ laughter was different. It was huge and light and-- overwhelmed, maybe, but with _happiness_ . Or whatever was bigger than happiness. _Euphoria_ , maybe. Theo loved Quentin too much ( _Alice still remembered pudgy baby fists tangled in long brown hair, Quentin beaming, even as he flinched at the sharp little tugs on his scalp_ ), to sound like _this_ if Quentin was really in trouble. 

That’s what Alice was telling herself, anyway. 

“Are you--” she tried again, still stroking steadily over Theo’s temple, while Theo slowly came down, wheezing and clutching at her middle. “Did you take something?” 

That made Theo laugh harder. “ _God_ , wouldn’t _that_ be in character,” she said, before shaking her head. “No. No, I--” she took a deep breath, but another giggle broke through. “He _did_ offer to get me drunk, though,” she said, out of nowhere that Alice could follow. 

Whoever _he_ was, and whatever he’d offered, and _why_ , the simple act of mentioning it seemed to bring Theo down from her high more quickly and more efficiently than all of Alice’s admittedly rusty little-girl-mothering. (Lucy hadn’t _needed_ her hair soothed since she was about eight years old, and even then, she’d preferred to grip Alice’s wrist and control the speed and direction herself, little tongue clamped at the corner of her mouth.)

Theo’s eyes went glassy suddenly, and bruise-tender, sending the fear that Alice had been holding at bay spiking again. 

“He was-- _so handsome_ , more than I remembered,” Theo said, which was even stranger for her than the messy hair, honestly. Her eyes went more focused for a moment, darting over to Alice, like she saw the humor, too, as she added, “I mean, I know I’m not exactly a connoisseur in that area.” 

“Seriously, though,” she continued, going far away again, somewhere Alice couldn’t follow. “And-- God, the way he _looked_ at him.”

Something in Alice twinged at that, even though she still didn’t understand what Theo was talking about. Then Theo’s mouth lifted into another sad half-smile, as she closed her eyes against whatever it was that only she was seeing.

“Dad never stood a chance . . .” she murmured.

Alice’s hand clawed into Theo’s shoulder at that, kicking back into _Library-mode_ in an instant. “ _Theo_ ,” she bit out, ignoring the way her heart was pounding, again-- or just putting it to one side, for now. “Never had a chance to _what_? What happened to Q? Is he--?”

Theo opened her eyes again, looking confused as she took in Alice’s probably badly concealed panic. Then her eyes went wide, like she was finally fully present again, not half in whatever memory she was carrying. “Oh, oh, Aunt Alice, _no_ \-- he’s-- Dad’s _fine_ ,” she said in a rush, reaching up to pat at the hand that was probably biting into her shoulder. 

Alice exhaled with so much force her knees nearly buckled. She lowered herself to sit on the edge of the gleaming marble-top desk beside Theo, ignoring the shake in her hands as she did.

( _I think it’s bullshit, this idea that you don’t care about people_ , Greg had told her, the first night they-- in his bed, _after_ . She’d kept her bra and her skirt on, because Greg had made it seem like that was-- _I mean, if that’s what makes you comfortable, it’s so not a look I’m complaining about_ , he’d said, easy. He’d stripped completely, asking _is this okay?_ before taking off each article. When he’d gotten down to his socks, Alice’s mouth had twitched, and she’d said, mock-stern, _right only_ , like she was a person that gave _commands_ in bed, that joked around about it. Greg had laughed, his eyes crinkling to slits behind his glasses, but his left sock was was still on, while he laid half on top of her, after. _You express it differently, maybe_ , he’d allowed, walking his scarred and mottled fingers across her stomach, his two little hedge stars fully visible-- Alice hadn’t known yet then, that that was his favorite thing, running his hand right there. _Differently than your ex-- differently than he did, maybe_ . _But come on. You care_ so much _._ )

Catching her breath on the lip of the desk, Alice could feel the rise of Theo’s shoulders, as she ducked her head like she was trying to turtle into them. “I’m sorry,” Theo said, sounding embarrassed. “A lot has happened. Like, _a lot_ . But I shouldn’t have said it that way. Dad’s okay, _really_. Nothing’s wrong with him.” Her eyes darkened again. “Well, nothing that hasn’t been wrong for the last year and a half.” 

_Twenty years_ , Alice wanted to correct. _It’s only been a year and a half since it happened, but he knew it would happen for twenty. And I don’t think he ever forgot it, for a single day._

“Then what did you mean about me saving your Dad?” Alice asked instead. “If Quentin’s not in trouble?”

The pages that Alice had left on the corner of the desk, beside the crystal rabbit, caught Theo’s eye, then, and she craned her neck to look at them. Alice felt another little stab of guilt at the way they sat there, discarded, awaiting a judgment that Alice had promised herself she was done administering in the first place.

“This is Lucy’s,” Theo said, frowning, not answering Alice’s question.

It wasn’t surprising to Alice, exactly, that Theo could recognize Lucy’s work from a single open page. Or that she was-- as she always seemed to be, whenever Lucy started talking mile a minute about _memory harmonization_ and _just basic arithmetical balancing, Harris and Duckoe were elitist dicks for trying to make it seem more complicated_ \-- drawn in by it. 

They _had_ been in the middle of something, though. 

“Theo?” Alice prompted, one more time, and Theo looked startled, like she’d almost forgotten where she was. She really was moving in a thousand directions tonight, even more than usual. It was a good reminder that she wasn’t _just_ Eliot, no matter how much she looked like him. There was Q there, too, and Fen, and other things that were just wild, reckless, cares-more-than-she-says _Theo_.

Theo picked up Lucy’s discarded proposal and held it over her chest, gently, before taking a deep breath and meeting Alice’s eyes. 

Alice was glad she was already sitting, when Theo smiled widely, hazel eyes practically glowing, and said, “Well, the thing is-- _Quentin_ ’s not the dad that I need you to save.”

_Brakebills University, New York - July 2019_

“Um. Maybe if you-- tried explaining again what it is you actually know. About what Zelda-- did? To the wellspring.”

Alice wondered if it was something specific to being back at Brakebills, that made her feel like she needed to phrase everything as a question, instead of just telling people to shut up and _listen_ to her, already. Like it had never gone away, that feeling that if she tucked her hair behind her ear enough times, paid enough attention to her own lap, it would be less _obvious_ , the fact that she could break everyone here without really trying, all those people working so hard just to take their first baby steps at magic and yet still walking around with easy, ignorant confidence Alice could barely imagine. That she probably _would_ , too-- break them-- cold bitch that she was, if it suited her purposes. Or if she thought that it did.

Of course, _everyone here_ , on the third floor of the Brakebills Library on a Tuesday in July ( _\--and the tables on the east wing of the third floor always smell like bananas, no one knows why, but they’re the best place to study. Seriously, Al. You’re gonna be grateful for all your big bro’s expert tips when it’s your turn someday--_ ), was just one other person. She just felt to _Alice_ like more than one person.

Like two people, actually. 

“ _Ugh_.”

The groan came from beneath the mass of dark, wavy hair spread across the table. The curling tips of the longest strands almost brushed the Neitherlands Central Branch barcode on the dwindling pile of dusty volumes that were stacked by Alice’s elbow. 

Alice stopped herself from rolling her eyes, then considered that the-- that their-- that _Theo_ \-- was face-down on the lacquered wood and wouldn’t see it anyhow, and let herself go. Alice had barely completed the gesture when Theo’s head shot up like she could _sense_ the insult. She fixed Alice with a cranky glare from those shocking eyes-- imperious and regal in that way that made everything that came after that first semester at Brakebills feel like it made more sense than it actually had. Bored and playing up the boredom to cover whatever unshared (with Alice, anyway) thing was behind it. Looking at Alice like Alice was an annoying, unwanted scold, messing up all the fun they could be having if Alice wasn’t so busy trying to make sure _they didn’t actually die_.

Alice wondered for a moment if _she_ was the one who’d been sent back in time, somehow. But no. Because she’d never seen _Eliot_ perch on the arm of a chair quite like that, had she?

Whatever complaint Theo had raised her head to voice faded away, as a curious expression stole over her face. Whenever Alice had seen that expression before, she’d assumed it was-- gawking, maybe. Or like Alice was-- like whatever she was thinking or feeling (or trying _not_ to think or feel, more likely) was _amusing_ , somehow. _Look at the fussy little ice bitch trying to be a real girl._ But sometimes ( _when he wasn’t being cruel to her on purpose, anyway_ ) Alice had wondered if maybe it was actually just-- genuine curiosity. Wanting to _know_.

“I remind you a lot of him,” Theo said simply, her mouth quirking up at the corner in a way that answered her own not-question.

Alice looked down carefully at the pages of the open book in front of her and didn’t say anything. 

They were animal-skin, the pages. Probably antelope, going by the consistency and color. Alice had seen human-skin pages as a niffin-- plenty of them. She wasn’t sure if that should make her more or less squeamish about whatever creature had given its life for _these_ fragments of not-actually-helpful knowledge.

“I know I do. It’s okay” Theo added, shrugging-- not needing to think, apparently, one way or another, about what had died for the book she was skimming and where reading it ranked on the list of atrocities she’d committed in the pursuit of magic. “You-- future you, I mean. When you talk to me sometimes, I can see it, how much I remind you.” 

Her eyes clouded over, then, the way they had when-- when Alice had finally gotten tired of tiptoeing around the _obvious_ thing that Theo wasn’t saying. 

( _Yup, they get the full-on happily ever after-- admittedly a little queerer than the Brothers Grimm intended_ , Theo had confirmed with a lazy smile. She clearly meant the words. But something behind her doggedly unconcerned gaze also seemed to die a little, as she chirped them.)

Alice had frowned then. She did it again, now. Theo noticed, and she quickly changed the subject-- as if whatever future she claimed to represent involved an Alice Quinn that might actually _volunteer_ to involve herself in someone else’s complicated emotions.

“It’s a change of pace, honestly,” Theo went on, in that breezy tone that someone, somewhere in the Waugh bloodline must have decided was actually convincing. “Back home, people always tell me I look like my mom.”

“Well, your mother is the High King of Fillory. Apparently,” Alice answered tightly. “Maybe people just want to get on her good side.”

That had been mean, probably. But probably _less_ mean than wincing (again) at the unnecessary detail Theo had dropped earlier-- _Eliot,_ through and through-- about Quentin and Eliot and sweet, pretty Fen, and the do-it-for-Fillory threesome that had produced the very heir to the throne that had shown up from the future to dump yet another ill-advised quest into Alice’s lap. Definitely less mean than snorting that _of course_ Quentin would choose end up choosing Eliot, when Eliot apparently made a full-time job of servicing all the overgrown fanboy fantasies-- emotional, sexual, and otherwise-- that _Alice_ had left unfulfilled. 

Theo just smiled-- a little mean herself.

The reason Alice was currently juggling her newfound knowledge of the intimate details of her ex-boyfriend’s future relationship ( _current relationship-- you_ know _it’s already started_ ), along with the usual post-traumatic shame from her niffin crimes, all while trying to solve a problem that future-her had apparently tried and failed to crack for twenty years, was that whatever spell Theo’s mysterious horomancer-friend had devised that allowed Theo to be here in the first place didn’t carry any restrictions on revealing the future. 

That had been one of Alice’s first questions-- the first questions she’d let herself ask, at least-- after she’d dragged Theo ( _Quentin Coldwater’s daughter from the future_ ) in off of Alice’s doorstep in Modesto. Alice had yanked Sheila’s mother’s curtains shut, and rounded on the unconcerned girl ( _woman_ , whatever), and demanded to know _how_ she was here and didn’t she know that telling Alice about the future would create a paradox, pushing away the memory, as she said the word, of all the _stupid_ sci-fi movies Quentin had babbled about during those few precious, confusing weeks that they’d curled up talking (and not talking) together in her room at the Physical Cottage. 

Theo hadn’t dignified Alice’s urgency with more than a raised an eyebrow. ( _She hadn’t dignified_ anything _with more than that borrowed smirk, not until she’d gone grave and somehow even_ more _like_ him _and said,_ I don’t want-- I don’t want to see my dad while I’m here. _Please_ , Alice. Even if I ask to--) Instead she’d drawled out an explanation-- indulgent and _bored_ , in a way Alice had worked hard not to recognize-- as she traced a finger over the crystal figurines on the curio cabinet. 

The spell, Theo insisted, would erase Alice’s memory of her interactions with Theo. Or, not quite. It would-- _bury_ the memories, or surround them with something like the misdirection spell Alice had cast around their table after she’d brought them both here to Brakebills (and the magical texts that the future was apparently missing) with her pilfered alumni key. Everything that Alice and Theo did here would inform Alice’s choices going forward; she just wouldn’t realize it. Not until Theo went back to her time and cast the second half of the spell over the Alice that existed there, in the future, who apparently remembered none of this. As long as Theo could cast the spell on _each person_ she created new memories for when she went back-- or _forward_ , to _her_ time, God, _horomancy_ \-- then the equations would balance. She wouldn’t be changing the past at all, she said. She’d just be-- _harmonizing_ , she’d called it, with a fond little smile. Reminding everyone that the new thing that had happened was actually what had happened all along. 

( _And what if you run into someone you_ can’t _find in the future?_ Alice had demanded, aghast. _What if you see someone who’s--_

_Guess I better not_ , Theo had tossed back.)

Alice couldn’t decide if the whole spell was impressively sophisticated work, or some circular bullshit. She leaned toward the latter. 

( _Liar. She leaned toward the_ former _; her fingers almost_ itched _with the desire to actually see the equations, run them herself-- to learn it, try it, see if she could_ \--)

Alice had been half-convinced, at first, that Theo thought it was all bullshit, too, and was just reckless enough to try anyway. She’d wondered if _that_ was why Theo was being so-- tight-lipped. About certain things, anyway. Not about Fillory’s magic-- the reason, she said, that she was back here in the first place. God, she wouldn’t _shut up_ about the magic, and the fact that they were on the verge of losing it _again_ , and that it all had something to do with the Library and Everett and _no one knew what Zelda was up to until it was too late_. (The sparknotes story had made Alice’s gut churn with every word, recalling a useless tracing spell in a broken water glass.)

Theo hadn’t been exactly hesitant about about saying that she was-- _Quentin Coldwater’s daughter from future_ , either. Obviously.

It was the-- the _other_ thing that she so clearly _was_ , that she had declined, at first, to just _say_.

It turned out that that particular silence had nothing to do with the spell, though. Because when Alice herself had finally just _said it_ \-- looked in those too-obvious hazel eyes with the perfect eyeliner and the thick black lashes and said he’s _your_ other _dad, right? Your biological dad. Eliot_?-- tense and furious and frustrated, Theo had regarded her inscrutably for a moment, then admitted everything easily. _Everything_ , being High King Fen and her consort-in-name-only Eliot (and wasn’t _that_ a reversal, Alice had nearly sniffed), and Eliot’s-- _consort_ , in a lot more than that, and the beautiful dark-haired baby girl they would all raise together, with Fen’s advisor and sometimes-semi-secret lover _Aunt Margo_ , and Margo’s punching bag-ex _Uncle Josh_ , and _Aunt Julia_ and _Uncle Penny_ and-- 

And as Alice had listened, going even more tense and rejected and embarrassed, she’d realized too late what _had_ been behind Theo’s omission, if it wasn’t strategy. 

“Aunt Alice?”

Theo had been being _delicate_.

She _still_ was, waving long, slender fingers to get Alice’s attention, like anything about this situation could be friendly, or even _normal_ . As if this-- this _Aunt Alice_ thing, and all the _other_ patronizing hints Theo had dropped about their shared future-- _Lucy and Charlie_ , Alice kept hearing on a loop behind the Old Norse she was reading and the high-heeled Librarian footsteps she kept expecting, despite the misdirection spell she’d set up, _Greg and Lucy and Charlie--_ could make up for dragging Alice once again into the ocean of things she didn’t understand about about herself and Quentin and Eliot. Like whether Alice actually _wanted_ Quentin back as desperately as it still sometimes felt like she did, or if she just liked the way Quentin made her feel like shit half of the time for not being more of what _he_ actually wanted. Or whether it was jealousy or relief that overwhelmed her everytime she remembered the way Eliot’s whole face had gone slack, like there was nothing more he’d ever need, the moment Quentin had stepped into his embrace and started sobbing all over him at Brakebills South. 

“Hey, Aunt Alice, are you--”

“ _God_ , enough. You don’t need to-- I’m not your _Aunt Alice_.” 

She spit the words out on instinct. (All of her instincts-- the niffin _and_ the mouse-- were so much easier to follow when they were saying _lash out, keep them all away_ .) It was only after Theo stiffened and drew herself even taller in her seat, eyes hurt but pretending otherwise, and said, “You _are_ actually, but whatever,” that Alice remembered the worst thing about when-- when _Eliot_ had tried being _delicate_ with her. 

(It was the look on his face, when Alice inevitably shut him down. The look on his face, and the way it made it so much harder to feel like it was anything other than _right_ , what Quentin always seemed to choose, after he got past his stupid-little-boy fairy tales and remembered which of the people he claimed to love was candy-sweet on the outside and nothing but selfish-cold within, and which was the reverse.)

“Just tell me everything you know about what Zelda did,” Alice said again, as she didn’t-slam the ( _living_ ) pages on the latest dead-end in front of her. She made it sound like a command and not a question this time, and it made Theo bristle. _Good_.

“I _told_ you already,” Theo answered, folding stupidly graceful arms across her chest. “I don’t know _what_ Zelda did. None of us do. She blew up Power-Trip Everett before he could access the secret sea, niffined the fuck out draining it, and torched every book the Library had that was even halfway relevant, so no one could ever reverse whatever she did. That’s the whole fucking problem.” 

Alice huffed out a breath, leaning into the annoyance, letting it feed on so many past annoyances, so many memories of Eliot ( _and Quentin, too_ ) getting petulant every time they ran into a problem that couldn’t be solved with headlong self-destruction, that required actual, unglamorous _effort_ . It was an easier kind of friction to deal with than all the other tensions building around this warded table-- those other ones that were no one’s fault but Alice’s, for getting exactly what she wanted ( _what she pushed away anyone who interfered to get_ ) and still not being _happy_.

“I’m not asking you to tell me what _spell_ Zelda used,” Alice said, cold and snotty because someone had to be, probably, and that’s what she was good at being anyway. “Tell me whatever you _do_ know. Everything you’ve heard. Everything future-me was able to figure out from Zelda’s notes. Maybe something in there will--”

“What? Magically trigger some eureka moment?” Theo scoffed, but she stood up to pull another stack of books off the cart that Fogg had wheeled over to them himself a few hours ago, pushing it just inside the barrier of the misdirection spell, before walking away without a word. The still-fresh memory of his student in a Library-issued gray jumpsuit had made it easy enough for Alice to manipulate him into calling in the books that she and Theo needed from the Main Branch and couldn’t exactly waltz in to get themselves. But even with Brakebills’ current carte blanche status-- which was the result of _Alice_ ’s work getting Harriet back from the mirror world, anyway-- too many requests for high-clearance texts about stripping, draining, and sealing source magic would attract notice, eventually. They’d already been at it for more than-- she checked her watch-- eight hours, and she’d lost track of how many remote check-outs Fogg had called in so far. 

“Do you have a better idea?” she asked, jutting her chin out. It was a rhetorical question, and they both knew it. If Theo had any better leads than _her father’s ex_ , she almost certainly would have showed up on _their_ doorsteps instead.

Theo scowled and floated a heavy book across the table with a wave of one finger-- just one more thing she’d inherited from the man that had, apparently, finally succeeded in coddling Q into loving him. Alice pulled it out of the air with considerably more effort and brought the crumbling tome to the table.

This one was just paper and leather. ( _Trees and cows-- acceptable sacrifices, apparently_.) The cover was worn so smooth, Alice couldn’t make out an author or a title. When she cracked the spine to read the frontispiece, she nearly gagged. 

_Hironomo_ . 

She’d come across one of his spells as a niffin-- a transmutation spell, though, metal to animal, not a draining spell like the ones collected here. The transmutation spell had been-- it was famous, or something close to that, in niffin circles. Hironomo’s calculations had been-- well, two of the sequences he’d used, and a line of the Sumerian he’d chosen, had had a secondary effect he’d never realized. The interaction of the elements would be almost impossible to see, if you were reading the spell like a human would ( _stupid_ children _,_ part of her still thought automatically, _like babies with matches_ ), instead of seeing _through_ the lines of text and the gestures to the crackling static arcs of magic itself that the text and the gestures were just _barely_ channeling. 

The secondary effect was a simple glamour-- harmless, really, except that it attached to the spell’s equations themselves, made them appear to balance, when in reality, they didn’t. To a human reading it, the spell would look entirely safe. The results were-- 

It had been one of Alice’s favorites. 

“Alice?” 

Alice shook her head, trying to clear out memories. ( _Screams_ and things _stretching, stretching_ , but never just _breaking_.) “Nothing,” she murmured in response to Theo’s almost-question. “It’s fine.” She made herself turn the page.

Theo sighed, long-suffering, and Alice heard her settle back in her chair. Alice tried to focus on the _sounds_ , Theo’s boot tapping against the table leg, the whisper as her long bell sleeves trailed over pages. Sounds were better than images, Alice had found, for blocking out things like the scream that a pound of lead made when someone ( _Alice_ ) forced it to be a butterfly, then two butterflies, then four, then sixteen thousand, until every atom was stretched across a million different flapping wings, scared and crying at being impossible and _alive_ and also pulled apart. 

“Hey, um, Aunt Alice, you look kind of pale. Well, _pale_ _r_.” 

Theo’s voice was getting closer, like she might reach out to Alice, or put a hand on her arm. 

That wasn’t something that-- that wasn’t what Alice deserved. 

“It’s _fine_ ,” she repeated again, making herself breathe in through her nose, out through her mouth. When she opened her eyes ( _when had she closed them_?) she tried to focus on the text in front of her, but all she could see was that first dangling sequence from the transmutation spell, the memory of seeing it and putting the pieces together, knowing what would happen, and--

She turned the page harshly, but the memories followed her. This time it was the second half of the hidden sequence that she could see, as clear as if it was written on the page. 

Alice narrowed her eyes.

Like it really _was_ written on the page, actually. And then-- _there_ , three lines from the bottom, the Sumerian, that little half phrase, that tiny nothing of a bridge that would let the electric charge of the magic cross from the first sequence into the second, to make the effect spread and spread until it was--

Alice sucked in a breath and looked up at Theo, who was leaning in close, looking so fucking _concerned_ that Alice half-expected to hear _you okay, Vix_ ?, despite that _Eliot_ face. 

Alice pushed the book more harshly at Theo than she probably needed to, to make up for whatever heavy, complicated thing her heart was doing, beneath the adrenaline-fueled racing. She jabbed at the third line from the bottom. “Can you read that?”

Theo looked at her skeptically, but peered down all the same, her dark hair brushing the pages. 

“Uhh. You should probably know that Sumerian is my worst language,” she said as she pulled her eyebrows together, clearly straining to remember the language.

That was confirmation enough, though-- even without a specific translation. It wasn’t just the guilt making Alice see things. It really was the same phrase. 

She flipped back one page, then forward again. 

It was the same phrase _and_ the same sequences, both of them-- a little farther apart in this spell than in metal-to-animal, but not nearly far enough, not with the Sumerian tagging so quickly after. It was--

“He made the same mistake twice,” she breathed out. She wasn’t sure how that could possibly surprise her ( _the real surprise would be ever_ stopping _making the same damn mistakes, after all_ ), but the words dropped like lead ( _like butterflies_ ), like a sentence all the same. 

“Who made what mistake?” Theo’s voice was so impatient and entitled and so _Eliot_ Alice could hardly stand it, but she didn’t have _time_ to stand it or not, not right now. She grabbed the notebook she’d given up on actually needing hours ago, and then the pen, and started scrawling--

“This-- the _secret sea_ that you mentioned, in Fillory. The magical reservoir,” she said to Theo as she scratched out equations, one after the other, flipping pages to get more space. “You said that’s what Everett was after, and that Zelda stopped him before he could fully unlock it.” 

Theo didn’t say anything, and Alice didn’t have the patience to pause and look up to confirm she was nodding, but she was. Of course, she was. It was so clear now. 

“But you said Zelda found the reservoir, after she fought Everett, and, whatever she did, it was to drain the sea, so no one could ever get that much power. _That_ ’s how she niffined out-- _God_ , of course she did. The chain reaction from the unbalanced side--”

The circumstances for Fillory were different, of course. Hironomo had been writing from Earth-- seventeenth century, if Alice remembered correctly-- _which you do. You always do._ But even with that adjustment, it couldn’t compensate for--

“--but the effect of the spell kept spreading. First the reservoir, then--”

“Chatwin’s Torrent,” Theo interjected, voice hard and _mournful_ in a way that almost made Alice want to look up and do-- _something_ . Pat her hand maybe, or run a hand over her carefully disheveled hair. ( _Lucy and Charlie_ , the loop repeated again, _Lucy and Charlie_.) 

“How long after Zelda drained the reservoir did you realize the torrent’s magic was gone?” she asked instead.

“Not long,” Theo said, clipped and strained, but pretending she wasn’t. “It was-- definitely not more than a month or so, I think, um. Maybe less.”

Alice frowned at that. A month for the draining spell to spread from the reservoir to the torrent, but then twenty years to the wellspring? Well, it might make sense, actually, if you accounted for the wellspring’s replenishing properties . . .

She flipped another page and lost-- more time. She wasn’t sure how much. But she _was_ sure of some things, at least, for a change. Things like the scratching of her pen and the soundness of the numbers. If she focused on those, she could almost push all the rest out, the way the edge of every scratch sounded like the beat of terrified wings. The way so much of her-- _too_ much of her, _any_ of her ( _how could she ever trust any part of her_ )-- would take the wing sounds back in a _second_ , if she could only _see_ the crackling blue behind the numbers again, instead of just imagining it.

She reached the end of the last formula, eventually, and surveyed her work. Some of her estimates were rough and back-of-the-envelope, obviously-- she had no idea what the “secret sea” even _was_ , let alone its dimensions. But if she was anywhere in the right ballpark ( _of course you are_ ), then--

“I know what spell Zelda used,” she finally said, pushing her glasses back where they’d inched down her nose. “I know what’s happening to Fillory’s magic.” 

Alice never expected _praise_ , when she figured out a problem-- a book-smarts problem, anyway. She was smarter than most people; she just was. And she was-- a more powerful magician. So when she figured something out, some impossible problem that no one else could solve, it was-- expected. It was _Margo_ , rolling her eyes and saying _for a genius it took you fucking long enough_. Or it was _Stephanie_ , spearing another olive with a cocktail sword and saying, _well, guess who proved herself right again_. There were exceptions, occasionally. ( _Charlie’s pale eyebrows raised_ , This is amazing, Al. You know, I bet if I showed this to half of the kids at the Cottage, they couldn’t solve it, even if they _weren’t_ drunk. Uhh, not that anyone is-- _Or brown eyes, deep and sweet and always searching hers a little too hard_.) But usually it was just-- expectation or annoyance. 

She didn’t expect anything different from Theo, not really-- even if she _had_ just possibly saved Theo’s family’s whole planet _and_ solved a problem future-her had been working on for twenty years in _less than ten hours_. She didn’t expect to somehow become the hero of the piece, for once. 

But she also hadn’t expected to look up into Theo’s face and see-- _fear_. 

( _But shouldn’t you have_? the mouse part asked. _When the only reason you had the pieces to put together in the first place_ _is--_ )

But Theo wasn’t actually looking at Alice, now that Alice was paying attention. She was staring straight over Alice’s shoulder. And maybe if Alice had been even a _fraction_ less absorbed in her work, she would have noticed sooner, too-- the figure standing tense and angry just behind Alice’s chair. ( _Typical_ , the other part of her snorted-- and wasn’t that convenient, that the voice that said _try it, try it, try it_ was the same one that got to _mock_ her when she actually did.) But as it was, Alice _hadn’t_ noticed-- not until she saw Theo’s horror-movie stare and turned to follow it.

When she did, the first thing she registered was those brown eyes. Deep and _angry_ and searching, this time, but not searching _Alice_ \-- not anymore. 

“ _Where is he_?” 

The question, which was directed solely at Theo, made Alice think of something Julia had said at Brakebills South, once she’d finally deigned to _speak_ to Alice, beyond the bare necessities for casting the Binder’s cryptic spell. Maybe the day’s victory had softened her anger. Or maybe being restored to demigoddess status had made her more forgiving. Or maybe even Julia Wicker’s righteous fury had had to bend to pity, as they sat keeping vigil over the stones that housed the Monster, making sure the ancient candle stayed burning until they could get the stones to the seam, pretending not to hear the ragged breathing on the opposite side of the wall, the slide and stick of two bodies rocking together, the hushed, frantic, nonsense words and the choked-off ( _kissed_ off) cries that were somehow more obscene than if they’d just let themselves moan and scream for each other. 

Across the table, Theo looked like she was frozen, her eyes tremendously wide.

( _It was the first serious thing that Theo had said, after being dragged into the foyer in Modesto._ I don’t want to see my dad while I’m here. _Please_ , Alice. Even if I ask you--) 

Without thinking, Alice pushed herself out of her chair and into his line of sight.

“ _Quentin_ ,” she said, stern and deliberate. It worked. He tore his eyes away from Theo-- for a moment anyway. 

“I don’t know who that is,” he said, one hand lifting to point at Theo, “but I swear to God, if she’s done something to him--”

“Who?” Alice asked, regretting it immediately. _Always such a stupid mouse_.

( _He . . . he threatened the Monster_ , Julia had said, like it was a confession. _He said he would die trying to destroy it, if it hurt--_ )

“ _Eliot_ ,” Quentin answered. Because of course he did. “I want to know what she did with _Eliot_.”

_Library Main Branch, The Neitherlands_ \- July 2047

Alice blinked once, behind her glasses, waiting to see some-- _break_ in Theo’s smile. Some awareness. A _ha ha, Aunt Alice, had you going there, of course I’m not really asking you to use time travel to try and bring back_ \-- 

Which was stupid. This wasn’t-- Theo could be irreverent, yes. And sometimes Alice thought Theo would die before admitting how badly she was hurting, about what had happened-- or about anything really. ( _Wonder where she’d gotten_ that _trait_ _from_.) But this wasn’t the kind of-- _joke_ that she would make.

Of course it wasn’t. The only thing that Theo idolized as much her dad was-- had been her _dad_.

(Alice remembered Quentin, miserable and pacing in the too-airy infirmary room, half-shouting _How do you think Theo’s going to_ \-- _Jesus, El, she_ worships _you._ And Eliot replying, too lightly, _She’ll still have you_ . Then, Quentin’s face falling, furious-- at Eliot, at himself ( _at Alice, probably, if he really thought about it_ ), saying _I’m going to be_ useless _and you fucking know it_ , while Eliot’s eyes went more terrified than when Lipson had given the diagnosis, and Alice, hovering miserably at the door, thought _why do I feel like I’ve seen this before?_ )

No, Theo would never joke about this. Which meant that Theo was serious.

Which meant that _Alice_ would have to be the one to--

It would have to be Alice. 

_Again_.

(It had been Alice the first time, that broke the news. To the family. She could remember every step of the long walk she’d taken down the spire stairwell, after she’d seen the royal carriage returning, through the window half-way up the tower. She’d reached the bottom early, and stood hiding just inside the castle door as long as she could, because she knew that he’d-- that they’d all know, the minute they saw her there. 

She’d waited there for seventeen minutes, holding the knowledge in her chest that _I’m so sorry, Q, it won’t be fifty years this time_.) 

“Theo,” she tried, careful, reaching delicately for the papers-- _Lucy’s papers_ \-- in Theo’s arms. The moment Alice touched them, she wished, desperately, that it was her _actual_ little girl she was holding, even if said little girl was twenty-three and grungy and righteously pissed off at Alice at the moment, instead of just her brilliant, too-tempting ideas.

But it was _Theo_ , not Lucy, who needed a parent right now, and Alice was the only one available. She put the crystal rabbit gently back on top of Lucy’s proposal, and squeezed the key necklace, just once, for support.

“Sweetie,” she finally said, because she knew that wasn’t a name that _Eliot_ had used. 

( _Princess_ , he’d called her, to Margo and Julia’s chagrin. And _little miss_ . And sometimes _your headache tonight, darling_ , but always with that too-tender smile.)

Alice sighed and scooted in closer, the soft material of her dress sliding easily across the polished-smooth desktop. “Sweetie, you know that-- horomancy, even Lucy’s spell, can’t _change_ the past.”

Theo’s smile didn’t falter, like Alice expected; if anything it grew. 

(Fen had been the first to step out of the carriage, that day, and Alice had known, from the determined smile on her still-girlish cheeks that she _knew_ , they all knew. It was only confirmed when stone-faced Margo stepped out behind Fen, barely noticing when Fen gripped her hand too tight.) 

“But that’s just it. I’m not talking about _changing_ anything,” Theo said, still excited, her hair a wild halo around her head. She reached out again--

(Theo had come out of the carriage next, arms outstretched. She’d all but collapsed onto Lucy, who had waited at the castle with Alice for the-- five days? Six? It was a blur-- that it had taken for the family to return, after Alice had sent a bunny back to Modesto with the news.)

\--and grabbed Alice’s hands, the way she had when she’d first burst through the office door. “Just-- let me explain, okay?”

(Quentin had been last, a long time after everyone else, like he’d been steeling himself to face the version of Whitespire that didn’t have _him_ in it. “I’m sorry you had to be the one to see it,” he’d said when he finally emerged, his eyes not quite meeting Alice’s. You _don’t get to feel sorry for_ me _about this_ , Alice had wanted to scream. But Quentin-- _oh, Q_ \-- his voice was small and so polite, as he’d asked, “Could you-- could you tell me where they took him, please.” And Alice had thought, so hard, _just cry, Q. Just cry so that I finally can_ . But as soon as she thought it, her heart sank. Because it had been so long since the image had haunted her-- _Quentin’s breathless, tear-soaked smile there at the bottom of the world, Eliot’s trembling fingers anchoring harder than they should have been able to in hair that didn’t have any gray yet_ \-- that she’d nearly forgotten: Quentin only ever cried after he got him _back_.)

Theo was still babbling about _consciousness swaps_ and _already figured it out_ and _just need to find it_ , and Alice squeezed her eyes shut, just for a moment, just to gather the strength that she needed to be the heavy, _Library-mode_ , again. 

( _They need you to do it, even if they don’t always love you for it_ . Those had been Greg’s words, at Sheila’s mother’s table-- or maybe it was just _their_ table, their house, by that point, with Charlie’s playpen in the front room and Lucy’s building blocks on the stairs and Greg’s yoga mat by the backdoor where Sheila had kept the baseball bat. It had been after a particularly ugly fight with Q about why it would be a terrible idea to summon the remains of Zelda’s niffin. She’d pinched her eyes shut and Greg had added, I _love you for it, though_.)

But closing her eyes this time was a mistake, because the memories were always waiting there, just behind her eyelids, like they lived there with all the tears that _she_ wasn’t entitled to cry about _this_. 

(Memories like-- _Theo_ , as determined as she looked tonight, although about what Alice couldn’t remember. Both hands on her hips, _glaring_ at Eliot with the kind of fury infinitely familiar to Alice and to every person who’d once been a too-smart nineteen-year-old that couldn’t bend the world to her will-- yet. Theo’s eyes had twitched bloody murder when Eliot’s matching set had only gone indulgent after the indignant speech that everyone in the throne room had heard. _The underage drinking and the thing with the Lorian ambassador’s daughter I will gladly take the blame for_ , he’d sighed with a fond pat to Quentin’s cheek, long fingers scratching ever so slightly at the gray-tinged beard that he was forever pretending to hate. _But her delusions of heroic grandeur are all you, darling._ And Quentin had tried so hard not to smile--)

“Aunt Alice, are you listening to me?” Theo was leaning in, all hope and enthusiasm--

_all_ you _, darling_ \--

“-- I’m trying to explain here--”

_Library-mode_ , Alice told herself. _This is what they need you for._ And then, in Greg’s voice, _this is how you show you care_.

“ _Enough_ , Theo,” she finally said, pulling her hands free. “It’s-- you can’t _fix_ this,” she added, maybe more harshly than someone who-- who loved _differently_ than Alice would have said, to a grieving daughter.

Theo stiffened at Alice’s outburst, but she didn’t give an inch. She didn’t even take her hands back, just left them extended, palms up between them, resting above the desk’s smooth surface. 

“I didn’t _say_ I could fix this,” she said carefully, deliberately, and so thoroughly _him_ that Alice could almost _see_ him, standing just over Theo’s shoulder, and fixing Alice with that same _how are you not hearing this, Quinn?_ look. “I said _you can_.” 

Theo paused to laugh, then, arch in a way that betrayed her frustration with Alice, as much as it did her parentage. “Actually,” she added, “I’m saying _you have to_.”

Alice crossed her arms tightly, thinking of all the _times_ she’d _wished_ she could go back and take the Library job when Zelda first offered it, or do a better job observing from the outside, or not be so caught up in her own hang-ups that she didn’t care about all the little signs that Zelda’s solution to the Everett situation would be as bad as the problem. “Sweetie, you don’t know how much I wish I could,” she said, with feeling. “But--”

“ _You’re not hearing me_ ,” Theo cut her off, nakedly insistent and _annoyed_ in a way that she rarely was, except when she was--

And _oh_ , there it was-- the flicker of guilt, as she reached once more more for Lucy’s papers and slid them, almost reluctantly, out from under the paperweight and toward Alice once again. 

“I didn’t say I _wanted_ you to,” Theo said, avoiding direct eye contact. “I said you’re _going_ to.” Then, she added, with a gulp and a meaningful nod toward the pages, “You _have_ to.”

_Brakebills University, New York - July 2019_

Quentin was staring daggers at Theo from the other side of the claustrophobic little triangle the three of them had formed, Quentin standing by the far corner of the dresser, Alice at its other end, and Theo hovering by the foot of the bed.

They were in Eliot’s old room at the Physical Kids’ Cottage-- which, typically for Brakebills, had apparently yet to be assigned to anyone else. Alice wasn’t sure she’d ever actually been _inside_ this room before. She was less impressed than Theo, who kept failing to hide the way she was staring at the artfully scattered photos of Eliot in suspenders and Margo with two eyes, her gaze caught somewhere between greedy and wistful. 

It had been Alice who convinced Quentin, just barely, to take whatever blow-up he felt he needed to have somewhere private. It had been a struggle ( _when wasn’t it, when they_ weren’t _foxes?_ ), his dark eyes swiveling back and forth between Alice and the stranger that he didn’t seem to realize had his boyfriend’s _face_ , like he couldn’t decide which one he trusted _least_ . But he’d agreed, finally, after Alice had pointed out that the same Order that had imprisoned her and whose head had apparently tried to kill Quentin in a mirror several months ago had its hand halfway up the ass of everyone at Brakebills, and so maybe it didn’t make sense to fight about all the nefarious things Alice and Theo _hadn’t even done_ to Eliot in _public_ , in the rubble of a misdirection spell that Quentin had ruined.

(She’d tried not to dwell, as they hurried across campus, on the way that Quentin had admired her misdirection wards, once. The way he’d admired everything she did, once. He used to say _these aren’t the droids you’re looking for_ , in an awful accent, every time she cast the spell, his eyes sparkling like all he wanted was to race up to her room and get his mouth back on her tits. She’d wanted to tell him to focus, a lot of the time-- or at least say that if he _wasn’t_ going to focus on doing whatever dangerous thing they needed to be behind a ward to try, then maybe he could direct some of his wandering attention to her _clit_ , which wasn’t actually where he seemed to think it was. But the look had always set off a little burst of warmth inside of her, all the same. She’d never imagined it being gone. 

Quentin had barely noticed this ward, even after he’d burst right through it.)

Alice had expected that he would lead them back to the cottage. Because _obviously_ he would. The cottage had always been a _home_ to him-- its biohazard couches and too-crowded patio and Margo and Eliot, lording over everyone-- in a way that she couldn’t fully understand. It had been a necessity, for her. A means to an end. But never-- _comfortable_ . Probably because of the very same things ( _the same people_ ) that had always made Quentin want to curl up like a puppy on the common room’s ugly tan rugs, soft belly exposed and begging for attention. 

(He’d never seemed to realize that people could kick him when he was like that, just as easily as they could pet him. Maybe because he never did seem to get kicked-- not by these people, anyway. Just loved and cuddled and invited into their bed and, eventually, inevitably-- _shh, Q, I’ve got you, baby. I’ve got you, love. It’s really me, honey. You did it. I_ \--)

She _hadn’t_ expected him to take them immediately to Eliot’s abandoned room, walking in like he owned it-- which was her mistake, really. The room wasn’t looking particularly abandoned, at the moment, though. Not with the hoodies that Eliot wouldn’t be caught dead in hanging out of every drawer, and the cracked-open books covering the bed and the dresser-- each one stuffed with Quentin’s little torn-off-notebook-corner bookmarks, because he would never dream of dog-earring. 

“You’re living here,” Alice blurted out, without meaning to. It was the first thing that anyone had said out loud, since Quentin had drawn the door shut behind them, and took up his angry stance by the dresser, a hunched and angry smudge against the opulent medallion design of the wallpaper. It drew matching sideways head-tilts from both Quentin and Theo, the double-vision making Alice dizzier than the wallpaper.

“ _Yeah_?” Q said it with that passive-aggressive, two-shouldered shrug of his, because for a person with so many hang-ups and insecurities, he never lacked the confidence to start a fight.

Alice had assumed that-- the _plan_ , or what people had been willing to discuss in front of her, back at Brakebills South, was for Margo and Josh to bring Eliot back to Fillory with them, to recuperate, while Quentin and Penny-23 disposed of the Monster, and Julia figured out what exactly elevation to demigoddess-hood entailed. (Kady would go back to the hedges. And Alice would go back to Modesto, not that anyone gave a shit.) It had been unstated but assumed-- _because how much more obvious could it be_ \-- that the arrangement, for Quentin in particular, was a temporary one, and that as soon as the Monster went into the seam, Quentin would walk through the Fillory clock and probably directly onto Eliot’s dick, which would no doubt be out and waiting for him. 

But, based on what Zelda and Sheila had said, when they’d come to recruit Alice ( _no one knew what Zelda was up to until it was too late_ ), Quentin and Penny-23 had come back from the seam months ago. 

And yet here Quentin was, still living in a mausoleum of Eliot’s party-boy past, which was slowly being overtaken by Quentin’s clutter. Meanwhile, there was no sign that the man himself had been in residence at any time _since_ that party-boy past. In fact that the only thing of _Eliot_ ’s that looked like it had been _touched_ in recent memory was one shirt-- too silky and too much paisley to be Quentin’s-- lying toward the top of the unmade bed, the cuff of one sleeve covered by a pillow. 

Alice tried not to wonder about what use Quentin was putting the wrinkled shirt to, there at the head of the bed-- mostly because it was painfully obvious that the answer was _clutching it to his chest while he slept_ . The image brought up too many memories of the _other_ things Alice had pretended not to hear, while she and Julia kept their mostly silent vigil over the stones and the candle at Brakebills South. Things like Eliot’s _I love you_ , coming out rushed and wobbly, and then, even more mortifying, the teary _should have--_ fuck, _I should have said it before_ , and Quentin’s _I just missed you so fucking much. I just needed you_ back, _I didn’t give a shit if you never--_

Quentin’s face went pink, and Alice wondered whether it was that obvious, what she had been thinking, or just where she’d been looking. And if he was embarrassed to be caught hoarding Eliot’s old things, or just embarrassed for _her_. Because they both knew, as much as they were trying to ignore the fact, that if they’d been having this conversation two years ago, or even one year ago, they’d be three rooms down the hall, and it would be one of Alice’s soft little cardigans tucked under Quentin’s pillow. 

( _What had happened_ , she wondered, not for the first time, _in that one short year? What had she missed, that took Quentin from looking tragic every time Alice pushed him away, to curling into the constant touches and embraces that he’d always just accepted politely from Eliot before?_ )

“I thought you’d be in Fillory,” she said accusingly, keeping her shoulders back and her chin up-- because it was still the easiest thing, when he hurt her without even trying, to hurt him back on purpose.

It worked. 

“I’ve been-- uh, working on some things,” Q said, stooping and bringing his hand to the back of his neck in a gesture so familiar that it hurt. “That’ve kept me on Earth, for a little bit.”

His eyes darted guiltily toward the dresser, but Alice couldn’t see anything out of order there-- just the usual assortment of hair ties and receipts and an orange pill bottle and deodorant. 

Her eyes narrowed. 

“It’s not permanent,” he said, defensively. Then, on an exhale, like he didn’t quite mean to say it out loud, “ _I hope_.”

_That_ got Theo’s attention, who had dropped quietly to sit on the rich comforter, eyes unreadable but fixed on the purple paisley shirt. She tore them away from the shirt to look up at Quentin. “You’re not-- ? But what about you and-- uh, Eliot?” 

It said a lot about Theo’s relationship with her parents (or maybe more about Alice’s relationship with her own) that Theo was so clumsy saying _Eliot_ , compared to the way that _Stephanie and Daniel_ had always rolled off of Alice’s tongue as easily as (and in Stephanie’s case, more easily than) _Mom and Dad_. It probably made Alice even more of a bitch for being _grateful_ that Theo was the one to bring his name into it. But she was-- grateful-- anyway. Because at this point, Alice wasn’t sure what would have come out, if _she’d_ been the one to stand here in this room that was thick with all the longing that _she’d_ never been wholly comfortable returning, and ask _what about you and Eliot_? Whether she would have stopped there, or whether she wouldn’t have been able to fight it down, the hurt-animal part of her that wanted to snarl _still think it’s cold, awful Alice who’s the problem? Or couldn’t Mr. Oh-Q-Baby-Honey love you enough, either?_

The hot, nauseous _shame_ that accompanied that thought was almost enough to distract Alice from the way Quentin’s eyes snapped to Theo. 

“What _about_ me and Eliot?” 

Theo straightened as far as she could without getting up from her perch on the bed. “Are you two not--” 

There was more she wanted to say, obviously, but her face closed off and she crossed her arms over her chest instead, looking pissed and wounded and ready to down a martini and make herself feel better by mocking someone else’s shoes. 

Quentin crossed his arms over his own chest, once again mirroring _his daughter_ \-- and how, _how_ could he not have seen it yet? When it was all Alice could see, the way that this heartbreaking girl kept blinking Eliot’s sad, pretty eyes, only for the stubborn boy who’d once loved only _Alice_ to peer out? It was like he was willfully blind to it-- or maybe just inevitably blind, to everything but his all-consuming concern over _Eliot_ , _Eliot_ , _Eliot_.

“Sorry, how the fuck is that your business?” Quentin huffed out, not sounding sorry in the slightest. “You still haven’t told me who the fuck you are, and why a homing spell that’s supposed to go off when _my-- Eliot_ is inside Brakebills’ wards, led me to you instead.”

“Your _Eliot_ ,” Alice suddenly found herself sneering. “Jesus, Q. You spent six months barely eating, barely sleeping, not giving a shit about anything but saving him from the Monster that _he_ pissed off, and you still can’t just admit that he’s your _boyfriend_.” 

Part of Alice wanted to believe that it was just-- _irritation_ , at Quentin’s cluelessness, that had made her lash out. An even more deluded part wanted to believe that she’d spoken up because of the way that Theo had gone even ramrod straighter at _who the fuck you are_ , and the way it made Alice’s heart hurt, in spite of herself, for a fearless, dark-haired little girl who was probably used to nothing but _you’re so amazing, sweetie_ and _Daddy and I are so proud of you_ from Quentin.

(And why would she be used to anything else? When it was so obvious that fatherhood would finally give Quentin a place to put all that endless affection and attention and _I care I care I care_ . Alice could practically see Quentin’s tender, patient hand, carding through dark curls after a nightmare _\-- because you already did, at Brakebills South._ )

But the bigger part of Alice knew damn well that saying what she’d said had nothing to do with nobleness or deflection, and everything to do with the way that same part of her _preened_ when her words made Quentin’s face go clouded and dark.

“It’s not like that,” he said, because he couldn’t ever resist telling her all the reasons she was wrong, even if they never seemed to amount to anything more than _because I really want to believe you are_. “You have no idea what we’ve-- what we have.”

_And how could I know_ , she wanted to shout, _when you won’t talk to me even after I saved both of your_ lives?

But that’s not what he’d meant, was it? When he said she had no idea. What he _meant_ was what could she possibly know about love, the bitch who’d dared not to rub his puppy belly every goddamn time he needed attention, just because she was a little busy trying not to drop the weight of the world that _he had helped put on her shoulders_? How could that possibly compare to Eliot, who’d gotten them all nearly killed more times than she could count, but who never missed an opportunity to swallow Quentin’s dick and tell him he was special?

“No,” she said, drawing her hurt around her, “I’m just the person who stopped you from getting yourself _killed_ because you didn’t give a shit about your own life once the Monster told you that _he_ was _dead_.”

Quentin flinched at that, hard. “I know I-- I wasn’t in a good place then,” he said. “I’m sorry if I didn’t thank you for--”

Alice snorted. “You thanked me. Right before you told me you were _Team Eliot_ and sent me away to _Modesto_.” 

She’d taken a Greyhound. She’d walked from Kady’s penthouse to the Port Authority, then got on a Greyhound. The seat beside her had stayed empty all the way through Saint Louis.

Quentin didn’t know that. Quentin had never _asked_ that. And now he was rolling his eyes. 

“You’re the one who decided you need to do a spell to figure out where you belonged,” he said, shaking his head. “ _Christ_ , Alice. You said you were _supposed_ to go to Modesto. How many times have you told me that I had to let you go. You’re seriously pissed off because I finally _listened_?”

_I was seriously_ heartbroken _because you finally listened._ But she couldn’t _say_ that; she had no right to say it, even if saying it would be anything other than futile to the point of embarrassing, with Quentin’s Eliot-shaped daughter looking on. So instead, she crossed her arms over her chest, digging her fingertips into the crepe at her elbows, and cleared her throat. 

“Don’t pretend you did it because you cared what I wanted, Q,” she said, swallowing tightly. “You did it because you wanted to _punish_ me--” 

His eyes went immediately wary. He was wondering, she knew, how she would fill in that blank, which of her sins she’d rank as the worst-- in _his_ eyes. 

_For not wanting to come back?_

_For not falling into your arms when you brought me back anyway, the way that Eliot did?_

_For trying to_ protect _you?_

“-- for the keys,” she finally admitted.

It was, she knew, the worst thing she’d done to him-- in _his_ eyes, anyway. Quentin could forgive her hurting _him_ . He’d forgive it over and over; he’d probably even claim to understand it. But hurting _magic_ ? ( _Hurting his chance to play the hero, you mean_ , the meanest part of her snorted.) That was the thing he could never forgive her for.

Proving her point, his eyes shuttered instantly. “I don’t want to talk about that,” he muttered, fidgeting one way, then the other.

The reaction didn’t _surprise_ Alice. He never wanted to talk about the keys. He’d avoided it, both times she’d seen him since they all went to Blackspire. But-- they _had_ to, didn’t they? If they were ever going to be-- _anything_ to each other, again? Even if it was too late for her to be all the things she used to be to him; even if she was never supposed to be those things in the first place. Couldn’t she still try to be-- _something_? 

( _Aunt Alice_ , she remembered. _Aunt Alice_.)

“I know you think I screwed up,” she said, stepping closer, because that was easier-- and _truer_ \-- than saying _I know I screwed up_.

Quentin noticed-- and he wasn’t impressed. “ _I_ think,” he repeated, incredulous. “ _I_ think you screwed up by destroying the keys that we all-- that Eliot _died_ for--” 

Alice felt her eyebrows pull together at that, and Quentin seemed to catch himself-- although _what_ he caught, Alice couldn’t say. 

“--uh, almost,” he corrected, quickly. “That Eliot almost died to get.” 

Alice stood her ground, even as her fingers twisted harder into her sleeves. “I had my reasons.”

Quentin huffed at that, short and nasty. 

Alice’s frown deepened. “I know they don’t make sense to you. But the things I saw, the things I _did_ \--”

( _A million lead wings, screaming._ )

“--I know you think magic is this wonderful, _good_ thing, Q. But it _isn’t_. Not always.”

Quentin looked down sharply at his hands at that. It made Alice tilt her head to the side, puzzled. But before she could read his hidden expression, he was digging the heels of his hands into his eyes and laughing unhappily.

“Yeah, what would I know about how _shitty_ magic can be.” He dropped his hands, then, and Alice almost wanted to reach for him, he looked that exhausted. But he pushed his hair back roughly ( _it was getting long, again, she noticed. Almost the way she remembered it, brushing the round collar of his Brakebills South whites_ ), and then crossed his arms again. “It wasn’t your decision to make. You could have-- you could have _talked_ to us.”

Her heart twisted at that-- not because she didn’t have an answer, but because she did. And he would hate it. “You would have tried to stop me,” she said, simply.

For a moment he just stared at her, mouth ajar, before he shaking his head, not so much in disbelief, but because of just _how_ easy it was for him to believe it. Of her. “Yeah,” he said finally, “that’s, uh-- that’s not how relationships _work_.”

There was something about the idea of _him_ lecturing _her_ on _how relationships work_ , like he was some kind of an _expert_ now, that set her teeth on edge. But that wasn’t the part that stung, almost literally, making her _chest_ burn.

“Did _Eliot_ teach you that?” she asked, not sure if she was more ashamed of the nastiness or the _sadness_ that even _she_ could hear in her voice. “You know all about how relationships are supposed to _work_ now, thanks to your not-boyfriend who doesn’t even live on this _planet_?”

Quentin’s eyes went deadly at that, but he gathered his arms in tighter against himself. “I’m not going to talk about that with you.”

That hurt even worse, the way he so clearly wanted to _protect_ what he had with Eliot, and keep their secrets away from Alice-- when he hadn’t even been able to keep his _body_ away from Eliot, when it had been him and Alice together and Eliot on the uncomfortable outside. 

“I know you think he’s some-- _perfect partner_ ,” she said, going even chillier, because the only other option was crying, “since he never says no to you--”

Quentin opened his mouth, like he wanted to interrupt, but Alice pressed on. 

“-- but I’m not the only one who made decisions without talking to you. _I’m_ not the one who let the Monster out of his cage.” 

“Eliot did what he did to _protect_ me.” Q took the bait immediately. Of course he did. He could never jump fast enough to ignore all the ways a person screwed up, so long as they made Quentin feel less _alone_.

“Oh, please,” Alice scoffed. “He did what he did because he’s codependent on you--”

“Eliot isn’t codependent on _anyone_ ,” Quentin interrupted, which would have been laughable even if he really _was_ as blind to the way that Eliot had always orbited him as he pretended to be. Because he’d met _Margo_ , hadn’t he?

“Eliot is a kicked dog who’s been begging for scraps from your table since the first minute he met you,” Alice answered. And she knew-- she _knew_ \-- how harsh the words were, how undeserved. But she was-- so _tired_ of ignoring it, all the ways that Eliot gave and gave and gave Quentin what he needed over and over again, when Alice had crawled up into her own shell, every time. She was tired of thinking ( _knowing_ ) that that meant there was something wrong with _her_ . And, _God_ , she was tired of Quentin not _seeing_ it, like he couldn’t see that the stranger watching horrified from the foot of the bed was the literal embodiment of all the things that Quentin and Eliot shared that Quentin and _Alice_ never would again.

“He killed his boyfriend for you,” she said, “he became King of Fillory for you, he married a _woman_ for you--”

Quentin blanched at that, but Alice kept going.

“-- he _tried_ to kill a monster for you. No luck there, but at least _he_ was actually _grateful_ when you dragged him to Brakebills South and bullied everyone into performing magic that they had _no business trying_ just so _you_ didn’t have to be alone anymore.”

_She should care_ , the mouse part-- or maybe the other part, it was loud enough-- was shouting at her. She should _care_ about the way Quentin’s eyes were going sadder and sadder, his shoulders slumping in on themselves. But she’d always been so terrible at it, _caring_ for Quentin, after those first couple weeks of easy friendship they’d shared. So terrible at understanding how to _want_ to give Quentin all the terrifying things he needed, instead of just knowing that she _should_.

“Jesus, no wonder you love him,” she finally said. “He’s exactly what you’ve always wanted-- someone who’ll hold your hand and bat his pretty eyes and _call you a hero_ when you make stupid, destructive choices and call it love, when you’re really just more afraid of being _alone_ than you are of _dying_.”

Quentin looked somewhere between heartsick and _physically_ sick, by the time she spit out the final word, leaning back heavily against the dresser, gripping the lip with white knuckles. 

Alice barely had time to register the ice-cold _regret_ starting in her center and seeping _everywhere_ , before she felt the hand clamp down on her shoulder. 

_Library Main Branch, The Neitherlands - July 2047_

Alice looked down at Lucy’s paper again, stark white against the gleaming gray swirls of the desktop, then back up at Theo. 

_I’m going to fix it,_ she’d said. _Whatever it takes._

“Theo,” Alice said, heart seizing. “You _didn’t_.”

_Brakebills University, New York - July 2019_

_Theo_ , Alice thought, when she felt the hand land on her shoulder. _Oh God, I said all of that in front of their_ daughter.

But when the hand jerked Alice around and away from Quentin, Theo was still on the bed. Not perched stiffly at the foot anymore, but scrambled as far back against the brass rails of the headboard as she could get. And if Alice had thought she’d looked terrified when she’d seen Quentin in the library, that was nothing compared to the _anguish_ twisting her strong features now, as she stared at the person who _had_ turned Alice.

Because it wasn’t Theo, who’d apparently slipped into the room ( _slipped onto the planet_ ) while Alice had been spewing her hurt jealousy everywhere.

It wasn’t Theo, who was hissing, “ _Jesus_ , Alice. That’s _enough_.”

It wasn’t Theo who let go of Alice’s shoulder like touching it a second longer was distasteful, or who pushed past Alice to rest careful hands on Quentin’s tight shoulders and murmur low clucking things that made Quentin’s eyes go wide with relief. 

And when that person turned back around, satisfied that Q was intact, it wasn’t _Theo_ ’s hazel eyes that bore furious into Alice.

It _was_ Theo, though, over on the bed, who made that awful choking sound, and whose hands crawled up to cover her face, and claw in her hair, the way Quentin had done so many times, all those times when he thought that he’d--

\--he’d fucked it all up.

_Oh_.

It was _Theo_ , who breathed out a single, despairing _oh shit_. 

( _That pained expression when she’d said_ yup, full-on happily ever after.)

And it was _Quentin_ , who leaned into the hand on his waist, staring with worried eyes, suddenly, at the person he’d asked _who the fuck you are_ , only minutes before.

( _The way she couldn’t tear her eyes away from that ugly paisley shirt._ )

And it was _Eliot_ , whose brow furrowed, as he tried to figure out who this stranger was that was hyperventilating on his old bed, and why his heart ached hearing her. 

( _As long as I can find everyone I create new memories for in my time and cast the second half of the spell on them, it all balances_ \--)

But it was _Alice_ \--

( _I don’t want to see my dad. Please,_ Alice _. Even if I ask--_ )

\-- it was Alice, as usual, who solved the puzzle. 

_Library Main Branch, The Neitherlands - July 2047_

Theo’s eyes-- _his eyes_ \-- glistened suddenly, sorry and not sorry all at once. “I swear, I didn’t think he’d be there,” she said. "I thought they'd both already been in Fillory by then."

Alice gripped the chain around her neck hard enough to break. 

“Theo,” she started again, closing her eyes and _tugging_.

The chain around Alice’s neck really _did_ break, then, and she fumbled to catch the key pendant before it hit the floor.

( _To Alice_ , the card inside the envelope had read, the first piece of mail to arrive in Modesto for _her_ . _There are always more of these, but there’s only one you. Your friendship really does mean a lot to him. Talk to him. For me. E._ )

She didn’t catch it in time. 

She never caught it in time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are two headcanons for which I will not apologize. When Quentin becomes a middle-aged, domestically content dad, he grows a beard, period. And Eliot is an inveterate abuser of endearments.
> 
> NEXT TIME: In 2046, Quentin asks Alice for something horrible.


	4. IV. THEN

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A year and a half before Theo goes to the past, Eliot's condition deteriorates, and Alice is a friend to Quentin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If last chapter was the low point of Alice and Quentin's friendship, then this chapter shows the hope on the horizon. It's also a glimpse into the heart of Quentin and Eliot's relationship-- and into the rest of this story.

IV. THEN

_Whitespire Castle, Fillory_ \- _February 2046 [Earth-date equivalency]_

“Um, Alice. Hey.” 

Quentin darted out of his chair as soon as the High King stood to bring the meeting to a close, nearly colliding with Fen as they both tried to make their way behind the chair that had sat empty between them for the duration of the meeting. They each stepped closer to the wall to let the other through, then each stepped closer to the chair, Quentin humming and Fen mumbling “oh!” each time they blocked the other. 

“Umber’s _balls_ ,” Margo finally huffed, shoulder-checking Quentin with more force than was strictly necessary in order to clear her own path through. “If this is what Theo’s conception looked like, then Eliot deserves a fucking medal.” 

Alice, standing on the other side of the long table where they convened their monthly Order-royal council summit meetings, suppressed a snort. It was hard at first, then easier when the automatic roll of Quentin’s eyes suddenly collapsed halfway through, his gaze dropping to where his hand had clawed into the back of that empty chair. 

Alice reached out but Fen was closer, her hand coming to rest on the small of Quentin’s back. Alice wondered if it was something about the memories of Theo and Lucy and Charlie, fifteen years younger and three feet shorter (well, more like two feet shorter in Lucy’s case), that provoked the same instinct in two women who literally came from different planets. Or if Quentin could just pull the maternal impulse out of anybody. 

Not out of Margo, though, apparently. At least, not right now, with everyone watching. Not about _this_. At the change in Quentin’s bearing, Margo’s teasing-but-not expression shuttered. When Fen wrapped her arm around him, mouth soft and frowning, Margo’s eyes went stonier still. She raised her chin, giving the clinging pair a look of scathing disappointment, then turned and sailed across the room without another word. 

Fen sighed, watching with tired eyes as the High King’s Hand used both of her own to shove open the door that led toward the royal chambers, hard enough that Alice winced.

“I should . . . go. Check on her,” Fen said, once the crack of wood on stone stopped echoing in the room.

She turned to follow Margo’s steps, then stopped, pausing to look meaningfully at Alice, then Quentin. Quentin nodded at her quickly, and her expression went relieved, the purple and red stones of her High King crown throwing sparks as it slipped down a hair over the smoothing furrows on her forehead.

“Should I tell him you’ll be up soon?” she asked Quentin, voice mild. 

Quentin’s spine pulled in tight like someone had jerked a rope in his stomach, but he nodded again, more slowly this time. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll-- in a few minutes.”

“Okay,” Fen said, running her hand once more over the tense curve of his back. “Theo and I are leaving in about an hour; we should be back by dinner. Are you sure you don’t want to--”

Quentin laughed then, bleakly, making Alice’s mouth pull down into an uneasy frown at the memories that the sound held. “Yeah, I bet he’d love that.”

Fen’s frown mirrored Alice’s own at Quentin’s words, and he shook his head, pulling himself straighter. “Sorry, sorry. I’m-- no, I’m gonna stay. Today. But, um, say hi to Fray for me? And the cubs?”

Fen’s smile didn’t quite reach her eyes, but she squeezed his shoulder once, then gave a tight nod to Alice, before shuffling off to where Margo had disappeared.

Quentin watched her leave, then turned to Alice. “Do you-- uh, have a minute?” 

He was scratching at his bearded jaw and avoiding direct eye contact in a way that made Alice’s heart jump into her throat. She nodded, before turning to Sheila, who was still hovering at her right side, watching Quentin-- and the empty chair-- with the unobtrusive sympathy she carried so well. 

“I’ll meet you back at the office?” Alice said, doing her best to look and sound casual. 

Sheila’s expression was knowing all the same. She patted Alice’s shoulder once, much like Fen had done to Quentin, before gathering up her folders and heading toward the door on the opposite side of the hall from the one that Margo and Fen had left through.

When she was out of sight, Alice turned back to Quentin. She allowed herself a moment to take in all the things she’d done her best to ignore during the meeting, as she bustled competently from one agenda item to the next. Things like the bags under his eyes and the way his hands wouldn’t stop tucking and twitching and _moving_ \-- more like the frantic twenty-something in her memories than the calmer, steadier Quentin he’d settled into being. 

(The calmer, steadier Quentin that he’d _been settled_ into being.)

Maybe it was because the boy he’d once been was so near the surface today, that Alice felt _nervous_ around him for the first time in decades. Her hands flew without warning to the seams of her pencil skirt, like they still expected the flounces of the too-short doll dresses Alice once preferred to be there to hide them. 

It would sound _romantic_ to some people, she thought, to say that _he makes me feel twenty-four again_ . It would sound like something other than _you make me feel guilty and awkward and like I don’t know how to_ help _you._

With a steadying breath, she peeled her palms from the sides of her skirt and made herself reach for her oldest friend’s arm, one hand going to his shoulder, the other to the crook of his elbow. He smiled, a little lopsided but grateful.

It almost reached his eyes.

“Walk with me?” he asked, gesturing with his chin to the garden beyond the tall arched windows. It was February back on Earth (not that seasons meant all that much in Modesto), but here the late-summer sun was streaming through the heavy glass. 

She nodded, bringing one hand to adjust the bag on her shoulder, and looping the other around his bicep. He patted that one carefully as they walked out yet a third door, then down angular corridors that joined up in patterns Alice still didn’t understand, no matter how many meetings and birthday parties and _I-fucked-up-again-could-you-come-by-and-let-him-bitch-for-a-few-hours/ I’ll-make-daiquiris-bring-Greg-they-can-talk-about-Star-Trek_ brunches she attended. She had never been meant to sit on a throne here, she understood now, no matter how good or guilty Eliot’s intentions had been when he put that crown on her head and deemed her wise. But she _was_ meant to care about the people who did, more than she once realized.

She stole a glance at Quentin out of the corner of her eye, in jeans and crownless even after more than twenty-five years living here, and wondered if maybe his destiny wasn’t all that different from hers.

“How are things in the workshop?” she asked as they walked out a wide doorway into the mid-morning sun. It beat down warmly against the back of her dark turtleneck.

“Fixed a doll yesterday,” he said, shrugging his shoulders and squinting to look at the blood-red blossoms that were warbling off-color sea shanties on the branch above them. “So, you know, really putting that Brakebills education to use.”

Alice’s fingers drifted unthinkingly to the necklace around her neck. Quentin tore his eyes away from the singing flowers in time to notice, his eyes tracing the loops of the delicate filigree.

“Magic doesn’t always have to be big heroics, you know,” she said, not able to fully remove the pedantic note in her voice.

Quentin smiled a little more honestly, all the same-- probably as much at the tone as the words, she knew. Maybe because it was so familiar, him brooding and Alice not quite able to keep herself from lecturing, and it was just that comfortable, to have one thing feel the _same_ , when they both knew that every minute-- every _heartbeat_ \-- was drawing them closer and closer to nothing ever being the same again. 

Or maybe it was just the sunlight dappling through the branches overhead. _There’s no crying in the sunshine_ , Greg always used to say, voice soft and precise in the way that she loved, as he bounced fussing Lucy then Charlie out on the concrete stoop that they’d later turned into a real patio, cupping their soft, bald scalps with the hands he’d been so afraid of, once.

They walked a few steps in silence, not headed anywhere in particular, when Alice volunteered, “So Theo’s home?” 

Quentin nodded. “I was going to ask you about that, actually.” 

“Ask _me_?”

“She and Lucy were supposed to be going with Julia and 23 on a dig-- Egypt or something? Or, uh-- Nepal, maybe?”

Alice snorted. When Julia first came back from _finding her inner demigoddess_ on some kind of sacred-places roadtrip with the Binder all those years ago, then more or less informed Fogg that she was joining the Brakebills faculty and devoting herself to _rediscovering forms of magic that humans have lost sight of_ , Quentin had been all support. His support had gotten turned up to about eleven when he realized that, in between a lot of meditating, Julia’s speciality basically meant digging through sand for god-artifacts in places that got used as a backdrop for tacky action movies. According to Julia’s telling, as they had all sat eating Josh’s insanely good curry chicken puffs on the cushions spread out on the floor of Quentin and Eliot’s rooms in Whitespire one night (Eliot had been going through his faux-Morroccan aesthetic phase at the time), his enthusiasm had lasted about one day into the dig he’d insisted on accompanying her on, after which he’d ended up reading books behind a mosquito net, picking at his peeling sunburn, and, in Julia’s words, _staring at pictures of Eliot on his phone like Leia watching Han go into the carbonite._

( _Oh, our sweet, naive Q,_ Eliot had sighed to Julia, his mouth too-even in the way that meant he was pretending not to be touched by how much Quentin had missed him. _He still doesn’t realize which one of you he_ actually _wanted to be holding the whip in all those tawdry college-years Indiana Jones fantasies_ . Julia had snorted and said _I leave the whip in your capable hands now_ . Alice had gone red, and probably everyone thought that was because it was still awkward for her to think about Quentin and Eliot and the way that Eliot talked a good game about whips and _no talking back to Daddy_ when everyone could guess that their sex life mostly consisted of Eliot wrapping himself around Quentin and panting out how sweet and lovely he was. But she didn’t mind if they thought that, if she got to savor for herself a little longer the memory of the handsome hedge-starred pyromancy professor with the office a few doors down from Julia’s, and the way they’d both groaned when Alice had hissed out, sharp and surprising, _say I’m a bad girl_ , when she’d climbed into his lap the night before. 

_You’re mixing your young Harrison Ford metaphors_ , Quentin had finally grumbled around a curry puff, over Julia and Eliot and Penny and Margo and Josh and Kady and even Fen’s laughter. It came out half-hearted, though, with the way that Eliot’s fingertips were softly stroking the back of his reddened neck.) 

“Anyway,” Quentin was saying now, hair shorter and whiskers longer and eyes sadder, as they turned down a lane of literally weeping willows toward the fountain at the center of the gardens, “she portalled back last night saying the trip was off, and basically biting off heads if anyone said Lucy’s name. Did they fight or something?”

Alice considered the question. Lucy and Theo had been inseparable for almost literally their entire lives. ( _Typical Coldwater_ , Eliot mock-sighing as he stood over the cradle, _getting her head turned by a pretty little Quinn. Sorry, Quinn-Padilla_.) But they were also both enormously headstrong and quick-tempered, and come to think of it, the last time Alice had run into the two of them on campus on her way to Greg’s office, they’d been hunched over a table, staring at each other intensely, while Theo whisper-yelled _this is my responsibility, I can’t just_ \--, and Lucy said, _well maybe I_ _want to be sure_ \-- before they both shut up when Alice approached. 

“Maybe?” she offered, nose wrinkling. “It’s not like Lucy actually talks to me about that kind of thing,” she admitted.

Quentin barked out a little laugh at that. “Right. Because Theo is so forthcoming. You’ve met her father, right?” 

Alice smiled, thinking of the hot-pink sticker that Julia had found at a women’s march, that read PROUD FATHER OF A TERRIFYING WOMAN in black military-stencilled font, that hung above the workbench where Quentin tinkered delicately with dolls and clock-parts and the occasional unraveling Library book. Then she thought of Eliot’s long-suffering sigh and his _I’m just grateful Fillory hasn’t discovered cars yet, or that monstrosity would almost certainly be on the bumper_.

She hesitated, but only for a moment. She knew they’d run out of room to keep putting it off, could feel it in the way that Quentin sat down heavily on the bench beside the fountain. 

“How is he?” she asked, ripping off the bandaid.

Quentin gazed unblinking at the gurgling water. “Worse,” he said simply.

“Worse than a week ago?” It was hard to imagine, remembering how weak and waxy he’d looked, even as he’d waggled his eyebrows at her and said _so are you finally going to tell me what Greg’s like in bed? Dying man’s last wish and all that_.

Quentin turned to face her then and the look in his bottomless brown eyes stole her breath and caused the constant low-burning guilt that had settled in her chest to send up a hot flare. “Worse than a _day_ ago.” 

He turned back to the fountain almost immediately, his mouth quirking into one of those not-actually-a-smiles. “Yesterday he told me that he thinks he should get to fuck _any eligible and consenting member of the palace guard_ as part of his _send-off_.” 

Alice could hear which words in the sentence had come directly from Eliot’s mouth, not just because she knew the man well enough to recognize his particular brand of purposely insensitive humor, but because of the way Quentin’s mouth curled around them. 

“He’s just-- he’s trying to make you laugh,” Alice said weakly.

“Yeah, he’s fucking hilarious,” Quentin answered, acidic and hurt in equal measure. The hurt overtook the irritation, by leaps and bounds, though, when he added, “Then he told me that each one he fucked would count for one person that _I_ get to sleep with without feeling _guilty_ , when he’s--”

He dropped his head forward into his hands without finishing the sentence, tugging a little at his soft bangs, which still hung in his face, even if they were practically tidy compared to the way he’d worn his hair back when they were students. Alice came to sit on the bench beside him, not sure if she should touch him or leave him his space, heart sore and guilt throbbing at the thought of what it must be like for him, day after day, in this palace where Eliot kept making light of what was happening to him, because he thought that would somehow make it easier for Quentin to bear, while Fen watched with motherly concern and Margo refused to acknowledge it was happening at all.

Quentin ran a hand over his face then turned to face her, eyes guilty in a way that didn’t make sense, given who they both knew was really responsible for what was happening. “Listen, I have to ask you for something horrible,” he said.

Alice stiffened, but readied herself. She’d accept it, whatever it was. She was _good_ at doing the hard thing. And anyway, she was hardly entitled to say _no_ , about _this_ , was she?

“Fen and Margo have to go on some kind of urgent diplomatic mission to one of the Outer Islands next week,” he said. “There’s some-- bullshit about sirens and shipping routes, I don’t know. Theo’s going with them-- heir to the throne, I guess. It’ll be a couple weeks. There’s no communication. No bunnies.” 

Alice tried not to let the confusion show on her face, at the seeming nonsequitur. But she couldn’t silence the involuntary gasp of sympathy when Quentin stared straight at her and said, monotone, “He’s decided I have to go with them.”

“Oh, _Q_ \--”

There was nothing Alice could say beyond that, that Quentin didn’t already know.

“He’s-- he’s sending me away, Alice,” he said, mostly to his lap, with all the aggravation and all the understanding that almost thirty years ( _eighty though, wasn’t it? For them._ ) would earn a person. “He thinks he’s-- protecting me. God, that _stupid_ bastard.”

He said _bastard_ like he always did, like it meant _sweetheart_.

“But if that’s what-- if he needs to-- if that makes him feel--” he continued. “I can _give_ him that.”

He looked up to face Alice then, eyes desperate in a way that made everything in Alice sing out _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so damned sorry_. 

“I just-- I don’t want him to be _alone_ , when it happens,” Quentin said, his voice hoarse and impossibly calm, at odds with the twisting storm behind his eyes. “ _God_ , I know it’s a terrible thing to ask you, but--”

Alice cut him off, before he had to say anything more. “You don’t have to ask,” she said, voice Library-hard, covering all of the regret and despair and _sorrow_ that served no purpose but venting out feelings that her foolish younger self had forfeited any right for them to have. “I’ll stay with him.” 

Quentin slumped over at her words, his relief palpable. “ _Thank you_ ,” he whispered. 

They sat in silence that wasn’t comfortable or uncomfortable for a few minutes, before Alice’s fingers twisted in the sides of her skirt again and she forced out, “Q, I--”

She stopped, because she didn’t want to-- didn’t want to inflict the rest of what she wanted to say on him, when he was carrying so much already.

He seemed to understand anyway. He shook his head. “ _Vix_ ,” he said, the old endearment making sense, somehow, in the intimacy of so much shared feeling-- not for each other, anymore, but for someone else. “Believe me. It’s not _you_ that I blame for all this.”

The black frustration in his voice made it all too clear who he _did_ blame, and it sent a frisson of worry through Alice. The same worry ( _only deeper, worlds and lifetimes deeper_ ) that Eliot couldn’t quite hide, there lingering behind all his quips, everytime he thought Quentin wasn’t looking.

( _Alice, please_ , she remembered. _Just-- be there for him? In your way?_ She remembered _that_ , like she remembered the first time that she saw a Fillorian healer issue a prescription for an SSRI, and Eliot’s wheedling tone as he bullied Quentin into formalizing the odd mending spells he’d been doing for the Library and others into an actual workshop with hours and an apprentice and _something to fill your time, hm?_ )

She knew that the lecturing tone was back as she asked, not quite able to meet his eyes, suddenly, “Have you-- have you thought about what you’ll do?”

She didn’t say _after_. It would be too cruel. Not to mention unnecessary.

Quentin stared into the bottomless blue fountain in a way that reminded Alice uncomfortably of another fountain, and the worst loss she’d known at the time, and the soft, off-key strains of _don’t you-- forget about me_. But the moment passed, and his voice was too light, but she believed it anyway, when he looked up at the few wispy clouds rolling through the sky above them and said, “Well, there’ll still be dolls that need to be fixed, won’t there?”

The _pride_ that filled Alice then was almost, _almost_ enough to crowd out the preemptive grief and the low-grade dread at what she’d agreed to do, and the thrumming guilt that was always a part of her, these days. “That’s-- Q, that’s not _nothing_ ,” she said fiercely.

“No,” he agreed, too easily. “It’s just not-- _everything_.” 

She sighed then, and put her arm around him, and he sighed, too, and let his head drop to her shoulder. 

“I wanted so fucking bad to be the hero, when we were young,” he said, “to be the one who saved the day.”

“I know,” Alice said. She didn’t say anything about how he’d saved her and hurt her, and hurt himself, with how badly he’d wanted it. It wasn’t the time, and they’d talked about it all before, anyway.

“He always made me feel like I didn’t have to,” Quentin continued, not needing to specify who _he_ was. “Not if--”

He broke off then, pressing his forehead harder into the soft fabric of Alice’s shirt. “I just-- I wish _someone_ could. Fuck, _El_ \--” 

Alice closed her eyes and rested her cheek against his hair, uncomfortably aware that-- this time, at least-- there was nothing else that she could offer. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT TIME: Theo makes a mess. Eliot makes a plea. Quentin makes a promise. Alice makes a plan.


	5. V. NOW

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alice, Quentin, and Eliot learn Eliot's fate. Which definitely, definitely can't be changed.
> 
> Right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to everyone who's reading! This chapter marks the midway point of the story. Fittingly, it also marks the point where our intrepid heroes switch from just discovering the problem, to solving it-- or starting to, anyway. Even more fittingly, this chapter marks the point where we move into the real heart of Quentin and Eliot's arc, hinted at in previous sections, which is about all the ways they try to protect and take care of each other-- sometimes effectively, sometimes not. I want to throw up a related warning that there's a fair bit of discussion in this chapter of Quentin's mental state during the events of canon season 4, and how his mental health plays into the recklessness that he displayed at various points in the quest to get Eliot back. Let's just consider this whole theme of this story my ongoing middle finger to the way that the show chose to conclude season 4. 
> 
> As a promise that there is light amid the darkness (and a happy ending a-coming), allow me to also tease that this chapter contains what is a serious contender for my personal favorite moment I've ever written between Quentin and Eliot . . .

V. NOW

_Brakebills University, New York - July 2019_

“So, to recap,” Eliot said, voice carefully neutral, “You’re our daughter. From thirty years in the future. And you’re here to save Fillory.”

It was fairly selective, Alice thought, as far as recaps went. It left out the parts, for example, that had Theo stalking the length of the cottage’s common room like a caged animal, and Alice’s thoughts racing through just as many hairpin turns as she sat on the edge of the thin-cushioned couch with the sickly green ikats, tearing through every fragment of horomancy knowledge she’d ever accrued-- as a niffin or otherwise-- looking for some way out of yet another disaster caused by the fact that neither Quentin and Eliot, nor the person they created, ever thought about _consequences_ once they had decided that they and everyone else needed to risk literally _everything_ for _Fillory_.

It also left out the part that had Quentin, beside Eliot on the soft, cream-colored sectional, staring brokenly at his own sneakers on the oatmeal carpet. 

Alice had just barely finished putting all the pieces of Theo’s mysterious behavior-- _and what they all meant_ \-- together in her own head, standing there in Eliot’s disorienting old room with her stomach beginning to sink through the floor, when Theo had leaped off of Eliot and Quentin’s (or, Eliot’s _then_ Quentin’s) bed, then run out of the bedroom and down the narrow cottage stairs. Alice had chased after her, catching her arm probably too hard before she could make it through the front door.

“ _Theo_ ,” Alice had gritted out. “ _Stop_.”

The look in Theo’s eyes when she’d rounded on Alice was almost feral. “You don’t _understand_ ,” she’d said.

“I _do_ ,” Alice had responded, not an ounce of sympathy in her voice, or in the steel grip on Theo’s arm. Because she _did_ understand. Of course she did. She was _Alice Knows Best_ (wasn’t she?). She always _understood_ the problem; she could always _solve_ it ( _no matter what awful things it took_ ). She just never knew how to make things actually _better_ for anyone.

She’d shaken her head, pushing that useless guilt aside. “Running won’t _solve_ anything,” she had said, when Theo still looked skeptical, her eyes going even harder behind the barrier of her glasses. “We need to-- oh my God, Theo, we need to _fix_ this.” 

She was being that cold, unfeeling bitch again, she knew-- no room for anything but facts and plans and action steps. But something in Theo had seemed to actually _relax_ at Alice’s sharp commands. 

Footsteps on the stairs had caught Alice’s attention at that point, and she’d turned to see Quentin hovering on the middle step, Eliot one stair behind him, with a protective hand covering the sensitive spot where Quentin’s neck became shoulder. Even as the bulk of her continued to cycle through possible solutions to the mess Theo had made, a small part of Alice had wondered, all claws and self-pity, if the two of them had followed straight away, or if they’d stopped for one of their sickeningly heartfelt _reunited-at-last_ embraces first. 

(An even smaller part of her already knew that _of course_ they had stopped, because of course _Eliot_ was the kind of partner who could even _think_ about feeding Q’s constant need for physical reassurance when the world around them was ending. It was the same part that remembered how Alice’s vicious little teeth had clamped down on the same tender spot where Eliot’s hand was resting, exactly one time. Quentin’s eyes had gone back in his skull, but she’d been too mortified to try again when she saw the purple mark the next morning. 

Eliot’s thumb traced the spot like he was soothing even the long-distant memory of the bruise. Or maybe of being ignored.)

“You have to tell them,” Alice had said to Theo, without looking away from Quentin and Eliot, and the effortlessly united front they seemed to project, just by being near each other-- even when, not ten minutes prior, Quentin had been stumbling through an explanation of why the two of them were living on separate _planets_.

For a moment, Theo’s whole body had stretched toward the door, like she was going to make a break for it anyway, even if it meant losing the arm that Alice was still gripping tight. Then she’d exhaled, shaky, and stomped into the living room, scrubbing her fingers through her hair and over her face, as she stood directly in front of the picture window, familiar in the space in a way that would have told Alice she was a physical kid even if Alice hadn’t seen her float two stacks of books simultaneously without looking up from the page in front of her that afternoon. ( _How could Quentin and Eliot’s child be anything but? The product of this place that had technically brought Alice and Quentin together just as much as it had brought Quentin and Eliot together, but seemed to carry memories of Quentin and Eliot in every stained cushion and mended tumbler, even as it had forgotten whatever Alice had begrudgingly given it?_ )

Quentin and Eliot had made their way into the living room as Theo collected herself, coming to sit shoulder to shoulder on the far end of the sectional, communicating with silent, stolen glances when they weren’t watching Theo with worried dad eyes-- even _before_ Theo revealed exactly how on-point that particular expression was.

“While it’s fairly clear from the look on your face that the answer is _very_ ,” Eliot had prompted in the gentle-but-pretending-otherwise voice he used on normally composed people who were losing their shit, “perhaps you should explain to us exactly how fucked we all are this time. And _why_.”

So Theo had. 

After she finished, she had started pacing, like she needed to burn off the energy her voice wasn’t using anymore. ( _Or maybe like she needed to focus on something other than her dad’s heart breaking,_ Alice thought, noticing the way that she kept sneaking glances at Eliot’s carefully unperturbed expression, not able to look away from him for long, without ever letting her sightline even graze the spot three inches to his left, where Q was curled miserably over his own lap.) She only paused whipping back and forth through the gulf of common space between Alice’s couch and Quentin and Eliot’s, when Eliot delivered his unconvincingly blasé summary of her tale. 

Once she did stop, she opened her mouth, maybe to object to Eliot’s so-fucking-typical attempt to downplay the emergency they had once again careened right into the middle of. But she stopped short when Eliot held up a hand. Alice wondered if she’d always been such a respectful daughter, or if that was new, since--

“I’ll grant you, there are-- other issues to be resolved,” Eliot said, preempting any criticism, as usual. His voice did that irritating little flutter on _other issues_ , like he thought he could actually make them smaller by sounding like they didn’t matter. Like his dismissiveness had power over actual reality, instead of just over how many people were willing to confront him with that reality, when the cost, as Alice knew, was sounding like a self-righteous schoolgirl in the face of all his worldly unconcern.

Alice crossed her arms and snorted, and Eliot pointedly didn’t look over, keeping his eyes trained on Theo. 

“But, taking one cataclysm at a time,” he continued, “Fillory’s magic is disappearing? Again?”

Alice wanted to believe that he was asking about Fillory first because he was trying to prove that he was above being worried for his own life, or maybe to show Q, once again, that he really was the dashing hero that Q and Q’s beloved little fantasy world had both been waiting for ( _nevermind that_ Alice _was the one who had blown herself up to slay their Beast_ ). But there was something about the way he tried and failed to keep the end of his sentence from twitching up that made her suspect that, if anything, he was _downplaying_ how much it scared him-- Fillory dying. The place was in his blood, after all. In his blood and Quentin’s heart. 

Not that Q seemed all that concerned about _Fillory_ at the moment.

“It’s different from-- whatever you guys did last time,” Theo answered him. “I mean-- I think it is. No one turned magic _off_ this time. It’s being-- drained.”

Eliot’s forehead wrinkled, like he wanted to ask more, but Theo stopped him with the same one-handed gesture Eliot had used on _her_ a minute before. As soon as she did, Eliot raised his eyebrows and drew back. Alice wondered if it was because he recognized where she’d learned that move, too, or if it was just because he was dismayed to finally find himself on the opposite side of it.

“That’s not--” Theo continued, then stopped. She pivoted on the heel of her boots, as if she was going to start pacing again, but she stayed put in the middle of the mismatched couches, her arms crossing over her chest. “Getting magic back isn’t the biggest problem right now,” she finally said, facing the window. 

Eliot scoffed. 

“Getting magic back _isn’t_ the biggest problem?” he repeated, eyebrows at his hairline. “Are you sure you’re Q’s daughter?”

Alice wanted so badly to call out his tired effort to make it all a joke, to make everyone dance around the real problem because he didn’t want to admit he was scared to face it head-on. Theo was quicker, though, and more effective, turning away from the window and fixing Eliot with a look so scathing down the bridge of the nose they both shared that Alice half-wondered if they had all somehow ended up in the mirror realm.

“ _Disconcerting_ ,” Eliot said, his own eyes going wide. He turned his head toward Q, like he wanted to ask if Q was seeing what _he_ was seeing.

Q didn’t take his eyes off the floor. 

There was a moment where Eliot wanted so blatantly to say _something_ to Q, to break him out of his stupor, that even _Alice_ could feel it. He pressed his lips together instead, before turning back to Theo, with obvious effort. 

“Okay,” he drawled, voice still dripping with false casualness, even as the hand on his left knee kept lifting and falling, like he was actively keeping it from reaching over and touching the tense line of Quentin’s neck and shoulders. “Accepting that there are-- other agenda items to hit, I just-- I want to make sure that there _is_ a plan for addressing the original problem that you came all the way back here to solve.” 

He licked his lips, pressing both palms flat against the dark, shiny material of his pants. “So. _Is_ there?” he asked, voice so much smaller than he probably intended. “A plan?”

His eyes were fierce and clear and still trained on Theo. Underneath all of his regal bearing, though, he looked-- _nervous_ , Alice thought. _Worried_. 

And desperate not to show it.

The charmed fire in the far hearth crackled with a loud pop, like one of the logs it wasn’t actually burning had snapped, and Eliot’s nervous eyes darted-- inadvertently, maybe, like he couldn’t help it-- to still-silent Quentin. When he made himself look back up at Theo, her matching hazel eyes went mournful. He immediately lifted his chin into its usual haughty, arrogant lift, the one that made Alice grit her teeth, every time.

Except--

Except he didn’t actually look like a too-cocky twentysomething who couldn’t think about himself dying, Alice suddenly realized. 

He looked like-- 

He looked like a _dad_ who wanted to know that his family would be okay after he _did_.

The realization (and the unwanted memories it summoned, of lampreys and tasers and sitting on Daniel’s knee-- _Daddy, I memorized about the Romans_ \-- while the butterflies broke out of their cocoons outside the study window) shamed Alice, the feeling coming hot and sudden and so familiar it might as well have been her default setting around Eliot. He seemed to bring it out in her like no one and nothing else-- whether he was putting a crown on her head and making her cry when she had _every reason_ to hate him; or rocking the person Alice had-- had _loved_ , as much as she was able, anyway, in his arms at Brakebills South; or sitting here pretending that it was _fine_ that he was going to _die_ because of some black and ugly magic wielded by a power-hungry Librarian, just so that the man he loved and the daughter they hadn’t even made yet would be annoyed at him instead of scared. 

What else could Alice feel _besides_ inadequate in comparison, as she sat there feeling the guilty ache where her own ( _careful, cold_ ) version of love stayed locked up tight and cautious inside the cage of her own bones?

While Alice was consumed with her own thoughts ( _as fucking usual_ ), Theo seemed to have gotten lost somewhere in Eliot’s disarmingly paternal expression, forgetting that there was a question she was supposed to be answering, as her own eyes drooped beneath her heavy eyebrows. 

“Theo,” Eliot prompted after a moment. 

It was the first time he’d used her name, Alice realized, right around the same time _he_ did, going by the undefinable ripple that swept across his features once the word was out. 

Theo jolted. 

“Right, sorry,” she said quickly, shaking her head and ducking behind the mess that she’d made of her hair, in between the storytelling and the pacing. 

The sight made the corner of Eliot’s mouth pull into the barest smile. 

“Sorry, yeah,” Theo said. “Uh, Aunt-- uh, _Alice_ already figured out the magic situation. Or, she figured out what spell Zelda used that’s draining the magic, anyway.”

Alice felt another stab of shame at Theo’s losing effort to stop calling her _aunt_ \-- even though she wasn’t sure if it was shame for holding someone at arm’s length ( _again_ ), or shame for having somehow tricked Theo and her parents at some point in the future into imagining that Alice would ever do anything else. 

Whatever its source, the shame was quickly displaced by an equally familiar crawling discomfort when Eliot pivoted to face _her_. 

“Does that mean you can fix it? Or, I mean, tell Theo how your future self should fix it?” he asked, flat and expectant, like Alice was one of his subjects or his servants, or whoever it was in Fillory that he actually had authority over anymore, now that he was technically just the High King’s _husband_ \-- at least, as far as Alice knew.

“It’s-- complicated.” Alice could hear how hesitant she sounded, how defensive-- _mouse, mouse, mouse_ . But, again, what else _could_ she be in front of this person who could have been created in a _lab_ to exacerbate every one of Alice’s insecurities-- even _before_ he had swooped in and carried the boy Alice had pushed away with both hands off to his royal bed, for all the confident, too-much-eye-contact, _baby, I_ \-- fucking that Alice herself had tried not to think about the Beast during, back when Quentin had fumblingly, sweetly, _insistently_ tried to give it to _her_? 

She pushed her hair behind one ear. “We don’t even know for sure that the spell I found is the one Zelda used.”

Theo frowned, at the same time Eliot leaned forward and said, “But you think it is. Right?”

Alice bit her lip and looked down at her hands.

_A million lead wings flapping, then a million more_.

She nodded, and Eliot settled back against the cushions, his left arm coming up to lie across the back of the couch. It would be snuggled around Q’s shoulder blades, if Q weren’t hanging forward, the ends of his hair almost brushing his knees. 

“Okay, then,” Eliot said. “Then you can fix it. Reverse it. Whatever.”

The little wave he made with the hand resting on the back of the couch got under her skin, as much for its entitlement as for its proximity to Quentin ( _at least she hoped_ ). She snorted-- _again_ , and _God_ why did she always have to be such a _child_ compared to him? A scared little girl who couldn’t just suck it up and _do_ it: the spell, or the quest, or putting her arms around Quentin even though there were a million fires to put out, just because he was _scared_ and lonely he _needed_ it-- needed someone who could care as much about _shh, baby, I’ve got you_ as they did about _actually_ saving him.

“Problem?” Eliot asked, the rise of his imperious eyebrow seeming to echo all of Alice’s own thoughts. 

_For a genius, it took you fucking long enough_ , Alice heard. And, _look who proved herself right,_ again.

Also: _just try it try it try it, stupid mouse_ . And, _oh my God, we can’t, we_ can’t. 

“It’s-- really complex magic,” she said, crossing her arms tightly across her stomach as she did. “There’s no guarantee that I could even-- the parts of the spell would need to be disincorporated, and then someone would have to build a patch to keep the remaining halves of the spell from splintering out, and find a way to balance _both_ of those, before you could even _begin_ to lift--”

“But you can _do_ it. You’re Alice Quinn,” Eliot insisted, eyes intense. Alice chose to focus on the ways it sounded like _commanding_ her, and not the ways it sounded like _believing_ in her.

“Even if I could--” she began to hedge.

Eliot cut in again. “You realize that the whole false-modesty thing has never suited you,” he said, pausing to let his eyes sweep exaggeratedly over her whole body. “In magic as little as in your wardrobe choices.”

Alice dug her blunt nails into her palms to keep from screaming. “ _Even if I could_ ,” she repeated, tighter if not louder, “it’s-- it’s not a choice that _I_ should be making! This affects an entire _world_.”

“And on behalf of that world,” he answered her, equally tight, with a confidence in what was _right_ , what was _needed_ , that Alice couldn’t begin to fathom anymore, “I am _asking_ you to _try_ it.”

He wasn’t _wrong_ \-- Alice knew that, or she _thought_ she did. She _might_ have known it, at least-- before she killed a beast and herself to save the world and the boy she loved, in more or less that order. But every day since then had been uncertain and violent and upside-down-- _she_ had been uncertain and violent and upside-down, doing things that the prissy little bitch who had bought all these ruffles and bows that she still wore would never have imagined. This whole situation would have been so clear to that stubborn little _Alice Knows Best_ , once-- and it still _was_ , to the _not_ -mouse inside her. Zelda had put an entire planet and everyone on it at risk, all because she had taken it upon _herself_ to decide what kinds of magic other people could be trusted to have access to. If Alice reversed the spell-- if she _could_ reverse it ( _oh, boo-hoo, bitch you_ know _you can_ )-- she’d just be putting things right, really. Atoning for her _own_ mistakes, even, in a way. 

Unless she fucked it all up, like she had with the keys, had with her father, had with Charlie, had with _Quentin_ \--

Alice’s processing was taking too long for Eliot, apparently. He gave an exaggerated roll of his charcoal-lined eyes before he sighed and said, “God _damn_ it, Alice. Just-- think of it as granting an apparently dying man’s last _wish_ , if that helps.”

His words landed with as much force as if he’d shouted them, even though he’d never raised his voice above that bored and easy cadence. Alice could see Theo flinch. It took Alice a second to register that she’d done the same.

_Quentin_ , though--

  


_Library Main Branch, The Neitherlands_ \- _July 2047_

“Oh shit, Aunt Alice-- here, let me--”

Theo jumped down to the floor, crawling half underneath Alice’s desk as she ran her hands over the plush white carpet, looking for the delicate gold necklace that Alice had let slip through her fingers. Theo’s eyes were red-rimmed when she crawled back out and sat on her heels, holding the broken thing out to Alice. 

The image sent Alice’s mind back, suddenly, to Theo, about six years old, and to Fen’s hand between small shoulder blades, gently pushing the sniffling girl forward at a kneeling Quentin, even as she gave both Quentin and Eliot warning glares over Theo’s head. Theo had held out some old book of Quentin’s, which was dripping wet and trailing kelp, the cheap Fillorian paper pages disintegrating into mash around the edges, while Lucy looked on from behind Fen’s skirt, the same translucent purple kelp curling around the light-up sneakers she’d out-argued Alice into buying. Quentin had taken the book out of Theo’s little hands carefully and scooped her up in both of his arms. _It’s okay,_ he’d said, with unexpected fierceness, _we’ll just have to fix it_ . And Eliot, standing behind him, had looked down with such overwhelming affection when he murmured, _Daddy’s very good at that, isn’t he, Princess? Fixing things_ , that Alice let her own arms go tighter around little Charlie, munching at the crackers Greg had packed, getting wet crumbs all over Alice’s lap.

Theo _now_ looked just as guilty as she had at six, as she silently begged forgiveness for another mess she had caused and Lucy had made possible. 

There were so many things Alice should say to her, right now-- _so_ many. But part of Alice ( _just a part_ , she understood now, just one of many parts) would always be the girl who never wanted to _stop_ being a niffin, and so the first thing she _actually_ said to Theo was, “It works?”

Theo tilted her head, her fingers flexing around the broken chain still resting in her hand.

“Lucy’s spell,” Alice said, pausing to bite her lip. “It-- it really works?”

It wasn’t that she had expected it _not_ to work; Lucy was-- an exceptional magician, and Alice was a strong enough magician herself to recognize that, even (or especially) in the person who had once pitched a screaming fit upon discovering that the children’s section of the Stanislaus County Public Library had no books on _actual_ magic. (There _were_ some actual magical books in the cooking/travel section, courtesy of the Order’s pilot interlibrary loan program. But those only appeared to magicians who knew the right spell _and_ had an active Neitherlands Library card, and not even Lucy’s stubbornness had succeeded in convincing Alice and the board to issue a card to a seven-year-old. Lucy _had_ ended up developing an abiding love for the Marguerite Henry books that _were_ available to seven-year-olds, however, so the field trip hadn’t been a total bust. She’d still glared for weeks every time Alice tried to make conversation about Misty and her foal, softening only when Greg had floated the possibility of a family vacation to Chincoteague, and Alice and Lucy’s eyes had both gone as wide as their plates of reheated pad thai.) 

_Knowing_ that Lucy’s spell really _did_ work, though--

The smile that spread across Theo’s face seemed to burst with the same pride that Alice felt. “Yeah,” Theo said. “It does. Oh my _God_ , it does.”

Theo closed her hand around the key pendant as she spoke, bringing her fist up to her mouth. The gesture-- and the look in her eyes-- was so familiar-- 

( _Oh my God, Q, you did it_ \-- the words breathed with that same delighted awe, so, so many times, Alice couldn’t even remember them all-- as shards of glass knitted back together, and Theo’s around-the-clock colicky crying stopped, and _once_ , at Brakebills South, as Eliot cupped Quentin’s tear-streaked face in trembling, bloodstained hands.) 

\--that all of Alice’s exhilaration blew out of her in one harsh breath, and was replaced with the icy _dread_ that had caused her to drop the necklace ( _his_ necklace) in the first place. 

“You went back, then?” she asked, even though it wasn’t really a question, when they both knew the answer.

Theo nodded anyway.

“ _When_?”

Theo had the decency to look down at her lap, but for all her guilty looks and silent apologies, she clearly didn’t feel an ounce of regret for what she’d done. 

“2019,” she admitted, looking up sharply when Alice hissed out a breath. 

“ _When_ in 2019?”

He-- _he_ had spent the first few months of 2019 trapped in his own mind by the monster from Blackspire Castle. Maybe-- it wasn’t _impossible_ \--

Except that it _was_ impossible, wasn’t it? Because meeting a monster couldn’t possibly have put _that_ look on Theo’s face. 

“July,” Theo finally said, pulling at the cuff of one long sleeve with her hand, and driving the nail in whatever hope Alice had been trying to muster as she did. “I went back to July 2019.” 

The monster had been long gone by July, floating in a seam between the worlds. Its _host_ , on the other hand, had been back in Quentin’s frantic arms-- enjoying a honeymoon period, probably. Alice couldn’t remember spending much time with them-- or with anyone, really-- back then, in those blurry early months of the Modesto exile that eventually became a Modesto _home_. 

If Theo had gone back just a few months earlier, Alice thought-- but _of course_ , she wouldn’t have. Not when the option was there, tempting and so dangerous Alice actually wanted to _scream_ at her and Lucy both.

“And-- you saw him,” Alice made herself confirm, after taking a too-deliberate breath to compose herself. She didn’t need to specify who. Theo’s wide, wet eyes and dazed smile-- the livewire charge she’d carried since the moment she’d stormed into Alice’s office-- made it all too clear.

“I _did_ ,” Theo answered, a laugh and a sob escaping at the same time as she nodded. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. We--”

But Alice slid off the desk and began striding with purpose around the room before Theo could finish, focused already on how to _fix_ it-- the paradox created by Theo seeing someone in the past that she _couldn't_ cast the second half of Lucy's spell on in the present. She headed first to the hidden compartment on the glass-enclosed bookshelf that used to be Zelda’s fireplace, where Alice had been stockpiling old horomancy treatises to help her make some kind of peace with Theo’s proposal. She carried the armful of tomes back to her desk and dropped them on the marble surface with a heavy thud, instantly cluttering the otherwise immaculate space, then reached for the bottom left-hand drawer of the desk, where she kept her emergency stash of watermelon-flavored vodka. ( _Eliot had nearly gagged, when he’d accepted the glass_ \-- no, no time for that now.) She was already flipping pages with one hand, even as she poured a generous slug of the fake-sweet vodka into the innocuous white mug that lived beside her ink blotter. 

Theo stopped talking and sidled up to stand beside Alice, glancing with infuriating casualness over the books as Alice discarded them, one after the next.

“There’s-- Lucy mentioned something about a timeslip spell, in one of the footnotes of her proposal,” Alice was muttering, mostly to herself. “She didn’t seem to think much of the craftwork, but I think it relies on-- a basic memory charm, to erase a past self’s memories of trading places with a future self. That’s--”

Alice pulled out a small journal from near the bottom of the stack, covered in cyrillic characters and English profanity and the puckered remains of old condensation rings. She frowned when she saw a little torn-off corner of college-ruled notebook paper sticking out of a page near the back.

“Here it is. It’s-- oh, it doesn’t say what memory charm to use. _God_ , it’s _Mayakovsky_ ’s, of course it doesn’t,” Alice scoffed, bitter even after all these years at the old man in his empty school, making screwed-up twenty-somethings fuck like foxes to liven up the banishment he’d brought on himself. She and Quentin might not have spent literal _years_ at each other’s throats if they hadn’t taken a serial harrasser’s word that they were supposed to be together, then systematically pulled each other apart trying to make the pieces fit. 

“I guess in theory, anything with enough power could-- it wouldn’t _actually_ balance Lucy’s equation, obviously,” Alice went on, back to the subject at hand, thinking out loud. “But it-- it might _contain_ the fissures that the imbalance creates in the timeline, at least, if you-- if you went back and wiped-- _his_ memory, of meeting you.”

Alice focused on the amused half-snort that Theo made, still not seeming half as worried about the potentially timeline-consuming paradox she’d created as Alice was. It was easier to focus on Theo and on Alice’s growing annoyance at her carelessness than to think about how hard it _still_ was, after a year, just to get out his _name_ . Even harder, somehow, knowing that Theo had _seen_ him, _talked to him_ probably-- not a year ago, but-- but _minutes_ ago. This bullheaded girl had stolen extra minutes or hours or maybe even days with the father that she’d never see again-- except in the mirror, and in the lines around Quentin’s eyes every time he had to muscle his way through a smile when Theo cracked a joke that was so much like _him_. 

It was more than just what _Theo_ had gained, though, that was making Alice breathe so carefully through the way her throat wanted to close. Theo-- and Lucy, too-- their terrifying daughters ( _that awful sticker in Quentin’s workshop and Eliot’s forlorn offense at the way it clashed with the shelves and the tiles and the tapestries he’d so carefully selected_ )-- they’d given more time to _Eliot_ , too, in a way. They’d put _more_ into the time he’d had, anyway: the chance to see what the daughter he adored would look like at twenty-four, reckless and headstrong and even more _him_ than when she’d sat at his bedside at twenty-three, threatening to give up her boots and dusters and raid the dozens of conservative black dresses in Aunt Alice’s wardrobe as punishment for making her mourn him, if he died before she--

Theo and Lucy had given him that, and now _Alice_ was trying to figure out how to strip that gift away. 

Because she _had_ to.

Because _someone_ had to.

( _They might not love you for it_ \--)

“Bechshler,” she made herself say, keeping her chin stiff, no matter how much it wanted to quiver. “Bechshler’s Perpetual Wipe would probably work, if you adjusted the circumstances for-- for the blood connection between you--”

Theo snorted again, and Alice slammed the white mug on the desk, nearly crushing the necklace that Theo had laid out gently on the corner, the broken edges of the chain touching so that it almost looked like a full circle again. 

“ _What_?” she demanded.

Theo didn’t say anything, just raised her eyebrows and tried half-heartedly to hide another laugh. When it escaped anyway, easy and musical, she pressed her lips together then said, “It’s just-- you _really_ haven’t changed as much as you always say.”

Alice froze, her fingers still touching the side of the mug, which was wet where the harsh slam against the desk had made vodka splash over the rim.

“You-- you saw her-- _me_. Back where you went.”

Theo’s eyes softened. ( _Oh, Quinn, when will you just accept that--_ ) “Aunt Alice,” she said with way too much understanding, “seriously. Who else would I go to for help?”

Alice didn’t-- _couldn’t_ give space to the warmth that she wanted to feel at those words. But she didn’t give space to the feelings of unworthiness that they brought forth either, the ones that her younger self would have clutched close. She saved both of those reactions for later, for clean pajamas and her grandmother’s quilt and Greg’s careful arms. For now, she made herself look levelly at Theo.

_Library-mode_.

“You have to go back and wipe him,” she told Theo. “It’s-- it still might not fix everything, but it’s the closest thing we can get to making the spell balance.”

Theo kept smiling, sphinx-like, so Alice said, firmly, “There’s no other way.”

Theo’s eyes danced, then. “ _Actually_ ,” she said--

  
  


_Brakebills University, New York - July 2019_

“Jesus fucking _Christ_ , Eliot.” 

Quentin was on his feet in an instant, casting aside his slumped-over paralysis just long enough to spring off of the sectional and stalk furiously to the fireplace behind it. When his hand hit the mantelpiece, he gripped the wood hard enough that the tips of his fingers went white, and bowed his head forward, his back to everyone in the room.

Eliot sighed and turned slowly to face Quentin’s hunched form. “Something you want to add, Q?” he asked, smooth and even.

Even though his back was to Eliot, Quentin seemed to sense Eliot’s gaze on him, and he turned-- equally slowly-- to meet Eliot’s eyes. The movement, which on Eliot had looked effortlessly dismissive, only served to make Quentin look more hangdog than he already did, Alice thought-- his shoulders curling tighter and his dark eyebrows pulling farther down with every labored degree of rotation.

When he finally made it the whole way around, the look he gave Eliot bordered on mournful-- and Alice half wanted to scoff like the sharp-edged bitch she was at how dramatic he was, how dramatic he _always_ was, always _Team Eliot_ and _except that it won’t save Eliot_ , before she remembered just in time that actually he had every right to _mourn-_ \- and that he’d probably had the same right those other times, too. 

“Can you stop pushing me away for, like, five _fucking_ seconds?” he asked, in the tight, raspy, _I’m-trying-to-love-you-why-can’t-you-let-me_ voice that Alice recognized all too well.

Eliot’s indifferent facade cracked at the question, or maybe just at Quentin’s hurt little voice, his mouth pulling down into an unhappy shape as his eyebrows drew together. “I’m not--”

“You are,” Quentin interrupted him, angry and certain, like he really didn’t _see_ it-- the way that all of Eliot’s abrasive callousness had been calculated to pull Quentin _in_ , to try to make him pay attention to larger-than-life Eliot and not to the dead man behind the curtain. 

“I get that you’re scared,” Quentin said more quietly, voice gentle and empathetic in the way that had always made the worst parts of Alice want to jab things into all that soft, exposed vulnerability to make him _shut up, shut up_ , when he had tried to smother her fury and her outrage with his too-sweet _understanding_.

Eliot was less cruel than Alice ( _no surprise there_ ), but just as defensive. Where Quentin’s _hurt_ had made him drop his uncaring mask, however briefly, Quentin’s _kindness_ brought it right back up.

“No, actually, I don’t think you do,” Eliot snorted, the distressed curl of his mouth straightening before the sentence was even out. 

Quentin’s big brown eyes went wide and even more pained, but he didn’t give any ground. “Seriously? You-- do you seriously think it’s any _less_ scary for me?” he asked, “ _Knowing_?”

Eliot looked at him, long and hard, another silent exchange passing between them.

“That is,” Eliot replied slowly, pausing to swallow, “the _opposite_ of what I think, actually.” 

There was meaning in the pronouncement that Alice couldn’t follow, but Quentin obviously _could_. It made him turn away from Eliot again-- quickly this time. Embarrassed. Or frustrated. Or maybe some combination of both. He curled his fingernails into the mantelpiece, then suddenly flew back around, his wild emotions trained on Alice, this time. 

“What about _you_ ?” he asked, spitting out _you_ like it tasted bad-- but also like it was _easy_ for him, resenting Alice this much, making her the villain from his old, bad life and his old, bad love. It made Alice think of the hushed way his mouth used to curl and mumble around _Vix_. It also made her think of how the endearment had never tumbled out that easily; it had felt conscious, intentional, every time he’d said it.

“Is this the part where you say I shouldn’t bother trying to save him?” he pushed, when Alice didn’t respond, despair mixing in with his anger, making it meaner.

“She’s not the one you’re mad at, Q,” Eliot said under his breath, still not looking away from Quentin, even though Quentin wouldn’t meet this eyes anymore.

“No, it’s okay,” Alice said, even and precise-- because that’s what she was, and that’s what _it_ was. _Okay_ . Because Q’s anger had always been-- it had been the least difficult for her to accept, of all the things he’d insisted on giving her. And because if-- if she was never going to be the person that Quentin chose, over Eliot, she at least wasn’t going to be the teary little girl that needed Eliot to make Quentin play nice. She’d faced things neither of them could _imagine_ \-- and _done_ them, too.

She raised her chin and met Quentin’s eyes steadily. “What exactly do you want to say to me, Quentin?”

He still didn’t seem used to her using his full name, and it seemed to break the rhythm of the tirade he’d been building up to. He ended up crossing his arms over his chest, a little awkwardly, and saying, “You’ve never taken anyone’s word on anything in your _life_ , and now you’re just going to accept the part where _she-_ -” he paused to _un_ cross his arms again and thrash one out in Theo’s direction-- “the fucking-- _time traveller_ says that in her future Eliot is _dead_ and there’s nothing we can do about it?”

The question made Alice flinch, even though it shouldn’t have.

It wasn’t _new_ information, after all. It wasn’t even the first time Alice was hearing the words-- _Eliot_ , _dead_ \-- out loud. Theo had said them first, plainly and without any visible trace of emotion, her deeply-Quentin pacing and rambling suddenly giving way to Eliot’s _never-let-them-see-you-break_ composure, when she had gotten to the part of her story that went _Everett,_ and _looking for the secret sea_ , and _Dad tried to stop him_ , and _incurable curse,_ and _attacking his heart,_ and _healers slowed it down but,_ and then, finally, _a year ago last March_. _Aunt Alice said he didn’t--_

That first time, it was Quentin who’d bent forwards when the words were said, his hands gripping his knees and his eyes screwing shut like it wouldn’t be true if he could keep himself from picturing it, while Eliot had stayed upright and by appearances unconcerned.

_This_ time, when the words came out in Quentin’s choked voice, it was Eliot who couldn’t mask the shudder that went through his shoulders. 

When the tremor passed, though, Eliot turned careful eyes to Theo, who had dropped to sit on the edge of the cluttered coffee table at some point when her parents had been squabbling, looking drawn and exhausted. “You’ll have to excuse your dad,” he said, still calm and deliberate. “He doesn’t mean to sound like _he’s calling you a liar_.”

He twisted around to glare at Quentin at the last words, drawing _apologize-or-it’s-the- couch-tonight_ around him like armor. 

Quentin squeezed his eyes shut, just for a second. But when he opened them again, he only glared at Eliot for a second, before turning meekly to Theo. 

It was a familiar routine for them, Alice realized-- the kind of old-married-couple dance that your grandparents had memorized: Quentin panicking and lashing out, Eliot giving him the _look_ , Quentin making nice. Even in this ridiculously high-stakes moment, with Quentin still looking half like he wanted to strangle Eliot and half like he wanted to wrap him up tight and never let him go, the ease with which they executed the steps was obvious. It made Alice wonder, _again_ , how exactly during the hectic months of the key quest and then a monster’s possession the two of them had found the time to go from friends that didn’t understand personal space to _this_ \-- not exactly _boyfriends_ , not even living on the same planet, apparently, but bound together in every sense. 

“I didn’t-- uh, _shit_ , I’m sorry, I’m--” Quentin said to Theo, before dropping his gaze back to the floor, like he couldn’t bear looking at _either_ of the two sets of hazel eyes that were watching him with too much concern. “I just-- I can’t be the only who sees it, right?”

“ _Q_ ,” Eliot warned, voice tight.

Quentin turned back to him immediately, meeting Eliot’s furrowing gaze head-on. “Tell me you’re not thinking it, too,” he said, arms crossing once more in a defiant challenge. “The _second_ she said who did it--”

“Only because _you_ are!” Eliot interrupted, his control cracking as his hands flexed open and closed. “ _Q_ \--” he tried again, a note of desperation creeping in. 

But Quentin ignored him, and turned back Alice, still urgent, but not angry the way he’d been moments before. This was Q on a mission now.

It made every part of Alice tense in a way that Q yelling at her never could. It made every part of her wonder why it always had to be the two of _them_ , trying to make decisions for the entire universe.

“This spell,” he said, “the time-travel spell. If she-- if she can’t-- cast it on the same people at both ends of the time jump, or whatever, it creates, like-- a _paradox_ , right?” 

He widened his eyes to show that he actually wanted Alice to respond to his rhetorical question. She pressed her lips together briefly, setting aside the memory of Quentin’s hairy legs tangled with hers in the sun-bright room at the end of the hall upstairs, and lazy Saturday afternoons, and the way his dumb rants on the time-travel mechanics of even dumber movies had made her actually giggle, back before all of that began feeling like a distraction she couldn’t afford.

( _Mmm_ , Eliot had hummed gently, when Quentin had gone on one of the same rants in the common room instead, fingers tucking back the long hair that fell forward as Quentin gestured too broady.)

“It would,” she said. Then, because if he insisted on making her a prop in his Socratic dialogue, Alice was at least going to use the time to try to steer the conversation back to the immediate problem they had to _solve_ , she quickly added, “That’s why it’s so important that we figure out another way to try to balance the spell. To _fix_ it.”

Eliot, who had gone from clenching and unclenching his fists to practically bouncing on the sofa cushion, seized on the idea with unexpected intensity. “ _Yes_ ,” he said, tapping his index finger hard against his thigh. “Fixing it. Balancing. We should definitely do-- _that_.” 

“El,” Quentin said low and impatient, like the grown ups were talking and Eliot was interrupting. But now Eliot was refusing to look at _him_.

“What about the rewind spell?” Eliot asked, eyes boring into Alice, voice a little too loud and a lot too eager. “Like we used for-- well, I think you were-- _ah_ , somewhat literally the monkey on Q’s back at the time, actually, but--” he paused just long enough to wave both hands-- “the theory stands!”

Alice frowned at the awkward reference to her time as a niffin ( _what had Quentin told him_ ? She wondered, _and how unthinkable must it be to Eliot, to have the opportunity to literally_ live inside Quentin _and do nothing but hurt him with it?_ ), but Eliot rushed on.

“We could-- we could set the clock back an hour or so,” he was saying. “Before I showed up. And you three could actually lock the door this time while you discuss your super-secret timeline shenanigans-- not that you’re the first ones to fail to lock _that_ particular door at a critical moment, believe me--”

The attempt to recapture his irreverent, give-no-shits tone was so forced that Alice nearly winced in sympathy. She shook her head.

“The spell you used during the bank heist only had a fifteen second reset,” she explained, gently-- well, gently for her, anyway. “It’s been almost two hours.”

“Then we’ll find another spell,” Eliot immediately answered. “One with more power.”

Her frown deepened. “I’ve heard of a few that can go longer, but they’re-- unpredictable, and the most anyone has ever gotten is about three minutes. Even if we could find a longer one somewhere, that could take hours or days, even. We’d be adding time faster than we could reset it.”

“Then _what_?” 

“ _Eliot_ ,” Quentin repeated, louder, but Eliot kept his eyes locked on Alice, like he was-- like he was begging her for something. 

_Help me help him_ , those intense black-lined eyes seemed to be saying. _Please_.

Alice didn’t know what Eliot was so desperate to keep Quentin from saying, but she knew enough about Quentin’s usual approach that she could guess the basic outline. Quentin had a plan-- _that Eliot apparently knew just from looking at him_ \-- and it was reckless and dangerous and involved him throwing himself at an unsolvable problem, not because sacrificing himself would actually _solve_ it, but because he couldn’t imagine doing it any other way. 

Alice knew there was a long history there, that had roots in Quentin’s depression, and in his mysterious relationship with his apparently piece-of-work mother, and in the way that-- even after he’d decided that _Alice_ was the white knight who was supposed to ride into battle-- he had still always needed to be _doing_ something for her, even when all she’d wanted was for him to stay back and let her _focus_ . But she also wondered, sometimes, if it was partly _her_ fault-- the way that Quentin always reached first for the sacrifice play-- because of the way _she’d_ defeated the Beast. If maybe the lesson he’d taken away had been that the time loops only end and the monster only dies when someone’s body is left lifeless on the charred ground. 

Quentin never seemed to realize that she’d made that choice because she _wanted_ to protect innocent people from the Beast, and because-- because she _loved_ Quentin, yes. But she wouldn’t have _just_ done it for love, if she hadn’t also been sure ( _she’d been so sure of things, then_ ) that it would _work_ \-- if she hadn’t been sure that it was the only choice in forty timelines’ worth of choices that _could_ work. 

Maybe that kind of pragmatism didn’t look like _love_ to Quentin, or to Eliot, or to _anyone_ , but it was what Alice had to give.

“What about a memory wipe?” she offered, putting out the idea she’d been playing with off and on since Theo had told her story. “It wouldn’t be perfect,” she said quickly. “God, it probably wouldn’t even be very good. But, if we wiped your memories of the past few hours, that might-- it might _lessen_ the effect anyway, from Theo not-- not being able to cast the second half of the spell on you in her future.”

Theo perked up. “L- uh, my-- friend. The one who wrote the spell. I think she was looking into manual memory wipes as a failsafe, at one point.”

Alice bit her lip and looked over to Eliot. “To find a spell with enough power, we might not be able to be very precise. You could end up losing a couple days. And there’s no guarantee--”

Eliot was nodding before she even finished the sentence. “ _Yes_ ,” he said. “Fine, I don’t--”

“ _No_ ,” Quentin interrupted, speaking over him. 

Eliot’s glare was venomous. “Excuse me? This isn’t your decision to make.”

“ _Really_ ?” Quentin said, tossing his arms out and letting them fall. “ _That_ ’s the fight you want to have right now?”

Eliot shut his eyes and rolled in his lips, before training his focus back on Alice and Theo. “What spell would you recommend? For the wipe?”

“Chen?” Theo suggested, eyebrows drawing in. It wasn’t Alice’s first hint that, while Theo had inherited Eliot’s natural facility toward their shared discipline, she’d gotten Quentin’s decided mediocrity for formal magical study. 

Alice shook her head. “Chen’s not long-lasting enough. It has a forty percent fail rate a decade after the wipe. Maybe--”

“ _You don’t need to wipe his fucking memories if we stop him from dying in the first place_.” 

Quentin’s words reverberated in the silence that followed, which was otherwise broken only by the continued crackling of the spelled fire in the hearths.

Alice and Theo both looked to Eliot, but he looked away, toward the window where he used to smoke, bringing one long, thin hand up to cover his sudden, shocking snort. 

Alice and Theo turned to each other, then, and Alice nearly gasped, to see the same _help me_ look from another set of the same green-brown eyes.

Steeling herself, she lifted her chin to look at Quentin, who was coiled up tense and agitated, ready to explode-- or to do something stupid.

“Quentin,” she said, in the steady, uncompromising voice he’d claimed to love once, before he realized that he wouldn’t always agree with the things she refused to compromise on. “That’s not-- you heard Theo explain how the spell works. As soon as she goes back to her timeline, our memories of all of this will be buried. We won’t--” 

_No one knew what Zelda was planning until it was too late_ , Theo had said. 

_I’d love to have your perspective in particular_ , Zelda had said.

_I_ can’t, the little mouse in Alice had said, and gone back useless scrying in her useless, broken cup, all because she couldn’t _decide_ , couldn’t _trust--_

“-- we won’t be able to change anything, even if we wanted to,” she finished, holding back a sigh. 

“ _If_ we--” Quentin scoffed, shaking his head in disgust. “ _Nice_ , Alice.”

Alice clenched her jaw. “I just meant--”

“Yeah, I know _exactly_ what you meant,” he said, pissy and dismissive. 

She swallowed down the part that wanted to yell _no, you don’t, you never have_ , because that wasn’t _relevant_ right now, and it wouldn’t _help_. 

Quentin rolled right ahead. “I’m not talking about stopping it from happening in the future. I’m talking about making a change right now that would stop it from ever happening.” 

On the sectional, Eliot collapsed against the cushions with a bleak laugh, bringing _both_ hands to cover his face, now. “ _God_ , of course. Of course.”

Quentin glared out the corner of his eye, but he pressed on. “That could work, couldn’t it?”

Alice felt herself frown. “In theory, that would-- it would get rid of the paradox from Theo meeting Eliot here, if she could cast the spell on him in the future. But--” she hesitated, avoiding Quentin’s intent gaze. It had always hurt more, playing the heavy with _him_ , than it did with everyone else.

“--but that’s not how the spell works,” Theo finished for her, quiet, her overwhelming _regret_ plain in every word. “It-- it lets you _add_ memories, yeah. But you can’t-- I can’t come back here and _change_ events that have already happened, that people _remember_ happening. It doesn’t have the power for that.”

“We’d be trading one paradox for an even bigger one,” Alice explained.. 

“So we make a fucking paradox, then!” Quentin said, throwing his arms wide. “It’s _Eliot_ \--”

It was more than Alice could bear. “ _God_ , Quentin,” she spit out. “We’re trying to tell you it wouldn’t _work_ . I know you want to believe that you can _change_ the laws of magic just by loving someone enough--”

“What the fuck would you know about loving someone enough?” 

He hadn’t said it to hurt her-- or, he hadn’t _just_ said it to hurt her. That was clear from the matter-of-fact tone, and from the way he visibly resisted ducking his head when she sucked in a breath-- like he was standing by what he’d said, even if it hurt to hear.

He’d said it because he _believed_ it. 

Maybe he was right to. 

Alice crossed her arms tightly over chest, mirroring Quentin’s own defensive posture. “You can think whatever you want about me,” she said, soft and cold, “but it won’t change the fact that what you’re talking about is _impossible_.” 

He didn’t change his stance, but she could see his eyes beginning to well, and it still _hurt_ her, to see him so sad, even after everything.

“I’m sorry,” she added, tense and awkward.

“Well, I’m fucking not.” 

Alice startled at Eliot’s brash interjection. She’d almost forgotten he was there. She’d almost forgotten _anyone_ was there but her, and Quentin, and the weight of all the ways they’d fucked up with each other. 

Eliot was rising off the sectional in a fluid motion, walking his way around to where Quentin still stood with crossed arms in front of the fireplace. He stopped less than foot in front of Quentin, the fire beginning to cast strange shadows over both of them, as the summer sun finally started setting outside the cottage’s windows. 

Alice used to be so resentful of their little late-night one-on-ones in front of that same fireplace-- the ones that they’d shared even back when Alice and Quentin were together and Quentin was barely willing to leave Alice’s bed to eat or to let her study, but still wandered down to the common room in the middle of the night for Eliot’s alcohol-and-sympathy routine. He would come back up to her bed after, wine-drunk and _warm_ \-- from the fire, but from more than that, too. He always seemed-- _full_ . Tended-to. ( _Loved_.) In a way that he never seemed to be with her-- not even on the nights that she’d roll over and hike her nightshirt up, when his giddy we-just-did-that grin would inevitably give way to the pinched little eyebrows that meant he was already worried about what he needed to do to make sure that it would happen again. 

Alice used to tell herself, those nights, that _of course_ it was easier for Quentin, being around Eliot; Eliot was so desperate for Quentin’s attention, beneath the pretense of not caring, that he’d never make it anything _but_ easy. But part of her would wonder if it was actually just that Eliot _loved_ Quentin, in ways or in registers that cold, hesitant, _Alice Knows Best_ could never really match.

She was finally getting her answer now.

“Tell them,” Eliot was saying to Quentin. His voice might have sounded like he didn’t give a shit, but his eyes were _burning_ , wilder than the cozy fire behind the grate. “Tell them what you wanna do.”

Quentin met Eliot’s fierce gaze without blinking. “I want to go stop Everett,” he told _Eliot_ , more than anyone else-- which was what Eliot had _actually_ been daring him to do anyhow. “ _Tonight._ Before he finds you and casts some fucking-- sadistic curse that makes you die slowly before you even go all-the-way gray. Is that so fucking wrong?”

Even the niffin-part of Alice, that gleefully bloodthirsty bitch, could recognize that the mouse-part of Alice wasn’t _wrong_ to think that was a terrible plan.

“Quentin, that’s-- Everett is a centuries-old master magician,” she said, even though neither Quentin nor Eliot had really been talking to her. “Based on what Theo’s said, he’s probably already succeeded at artificially increasing his power significantly at this point. A fight against him would be outmatched, and we don’t even know by how much.”

“Plus, the spell only brought me back here for twenty-four hours,” Theo added, miserable, but firm. “Anything we do, we’d need to do in the next--” she looked down at the watch on her wrist, which was all-black and studded like it came from Hot Topic, completely at odds with the rest of her female-Robin Hood ensemble-- “ten hours.”

Eliot sighed, breaking his eye contact with Quentin just long enough to look delicately at his daughter. “Oh, Princess,” he said, making Theo flinch, “there’d be no _we_ about it.” 

He looked back to Quentin, who was staring down at his crossed arms now. “Would there, Q?”

Quentin shrugged one shoulder before reluctantly meeting Eliot’s gaze again. “We-- we couldn’t risk Theo not making it back to cast the second half of the spell in the future.”

Eliot gave him a dark look that said that was _not at all_ why they couldn’t risk Theo. “And Alice?” he prompted. 

“It’s not her fight,” Quentin answered, more easily, making Alice wonder, again, if maybe the future Theo came from-- with its _Aunt Alice_ ’s and its _you and dad_ ’s (and its _Lucy and Charlie_ ’s, its _Greg_ ’s, and _Lucy_ ’s, and _Charlie_ ’s)-- really wasn’t _their_ future at all. 

Eliot’s eyes went solemn. “And what about me?” he asked.

Quentin tilted his head and widened his eyes-- a warning, but obviously not one Eliot was interested in heeding. 

“Why couldn’t _I_ go with you to fight Everett, Q?” he asked. 

“You _know_ why,” Q finally gritted out. 

“Oh, I do,” Eliot agreed. “But I want you to _say_ it.”

Quentin breathed out harshly through his mouth and tried to side-step Eliot, but Eliot caught him around his bicep.

“I’m not interested in playing this game with you, Eliot,” Quentin said, yanking his arm away and walking back toward the stairs. 

Eliot let him go, but his eyes were painful to watch, as they followed Quentin’s every step. There was love there, and frustration, and _fear_ , but there was also something else, something that he looked like he was wrestling with himself over whether he should-- or maybe _could_ \-- say.

“Do you have any idea how I felt when 23 told me what you did in the mirror world?” Eliot finally asked, looking and sounding broken, his hands tugging nervously at the buttons of his tailored coat, like he wasn’t sure what else to do with them. 

Quentin froze, shoulders hitching up tight around his ears.

_There was an . . . altercation_ , Zelda had said, _between Everett and Quentin_ \--

Eliot made himself walk forward, closing the space between him and Quentin’s back by about half. “He said that you were about to _cast_ .” Eliot flung the word out, like it hurt too much to keep in. “In the _mirror world_.”

Alice drew in a breath in spite of herself. 

“If he hadn’t listened when Everett said to travel you both out of there, you would have cast at Everett and it would have _torn_ you _apart_ ,” Eliot continued, his voice faltering as he added, “ and you fucking _knew_ it would.”

Quentin still didn’t say anything and Eliot stepped in closer. “The stones were already in the seam at that point,” Eliot said, like he was pleading with Quentin to explain where he was getting it wrong. “ _Why_ \--”

“Because Everett was fucking-- psychotic and dangerous! He was going to try to go in after the stones. He said he could do it. I thought-- _someone_ needed to stop him!” Quentin exploded, spinning around to face Eliot at last. “And _apparently_ I was right!” 

“Bull _shit_ you were right,” Eliot countered, looming over Quentin as the space between them disappeared. “If you had thrown that spell--”

“Then he’d be _dead_ ,” Quentin interrupted. “And _you_ would--”

“And _I_ would be drinking myself _unconscious_ somewhere in Fillory, listening to everyone jack off about what a fucking _hero_ you were, when _I_ knew--”

Eliot stopped himself short, his hands clenching into tight fists at his sides. Quentin stared silent for a few seconds, then lifted his chin.

“Say it,” he said gravely, repeating Eliot’s trick from a few minutes before. “What would you have known?”

Eliot’s whole face crumpled for a moment, but he took a deep breath in and made himself meet Quentin’s eyes again. “I know what it looks like when your depression gets bad, Q,” Eliot said. “When you start-- I _saw_ it. For fifty years, remember?”

Alice didn’t have time to scrutinize the impossibility of the statement; she was too busy fighting down the bile that rose up as Eliot’s words snapped the last year into horrifying new relief. She’d been so focused on all the ways that Quentin had stopped giving a shit about _her_ , as he twisted himself in knots appeasing the violent, unpredictable monster that was wearing the man he loved ( _his face and eyes_ ), that she’d barely even _noticed_ \--

But Eliot had.

“And that’s-- that’s what you think I’d be doing now?” Quentin asked, not quite putting in words the thing they were both talking around. “Because I want to stop Everett before he can _murder you_? You think I’d just be doing it because--” 

It looked like it killed Eliot more quickly and more decisively than anything Everett could ever do, when he hugged his arms across his own ribs and said, “Not-- not _just_ because.” 

The unspoken part of Eliot’s answer, or maybe the unshed tears glistening in Eliot’s eyes, seemed to take Quentin’s legs out from under him. He landed hard on the closest seat, which was the bench in the picture window. He raked his hands up and down his face and then back up into his hair. He gave a hard yank at the in-between-length strands, then dropped his hands to his lap like a child and looked up at Eliot, solemn and towering above him. 

“So you agree with _her_ then?” Quentin asked, sounding small. All the self-disgust that Alice had felt immediately after she threw those awful words in Quentin’s face in Eliot’s bedroom came flooding back, as he said, “You _still_ don’t believe I really love you? I just-- have some fucking-- _deathwish_?”

“ _No_ .” Eliot sank to his knees in front of Quentin in a moment, his big hands coming up to grip Quentin’s thighs. “ _No_ , I--”

But Quentin kept talking, mostly to himself, the heels of his hands coming back up to his eyes. “And that’s why you sent me away, after the seam--”

“Q, I didn’t _send you away_ , we _talked_ about this. We _both_ decided--” Eliot insisted, digging his fingers harder into Quentin’s legs and _pulling_ , until Quentin actually scooted forward on the bench. “Fillory is a shitshow right now, and its mental health facilities are nonexistent. I just--” 

He jerked at Quentin’s legs again, until Quentin took his hands from his eyes and looked at Eliot. 

“I just _wanted_ you to be somewhere you can get-- everything you need,” he finished, wide-eyed and helpless with how much he wanted to make Quentin _see_. 

“Have you ever thought that maybe _you’re_ everything I need?” Q returned, sounding more defeated than combative.

Eliot’s answering smile was adoring but sad. “You’re sweet,” he said gently, “but I’m _not_.” 

Quentin looked like he wanted to cry for just a second, but then he nodded, eyebrows still pinched tight. “Yeah, okay,” he said, quietly, wiping unobtrusively at the inside corners of his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. 

But that wasn’t _okay_ to Eliot, whose brow furrowed.

“That’s not what I-- Q, I love you,” he said-- and the words were still shaky and new like a baby foal testing its legs, the exact same way they had sounded from the other side of the wall at Brakebills South. Alice wondered if they would still sound that way in ten years, and in twenty, and in ( _almost_ ) thirty-- and if they still broke her wilted heart, _Aunt Alice_ ’s, just a little, every time she heard them. 

But Alice’s heart didn’t matter to anyone but her right now. Not in this moment, as Eliot reached up and carefully circled Quentin’s wrists, then wrapped both of Quentin’s surprisingly strong hands in his own. “I _love_ you, and--” he paused and quirked one eyebrow, “--and I-- understand intellectually that you love me. At least, I try to. _Most_ of the time.” 

Quentin fixed Eliot with his own version of Eliot’s _look_ , and Eliot smiled again, so softly Alice almost looked away. 

“No, I-- I _know_ you do,” Eliot said, only stumbling a little. “I do. But--” he took one more deep breath and said, halting but clear, “--but I don’t want this-- _us_ \-- _I_ don’t ever want to be something you use to _hurt_ yourself. That’s-- honeybear, that’s not what love _is_.”

_Then what is it?_ Alice wanted to scream. If it wasn’t Quentin throwing his vulnerable body at one obstacle after the next-- including the ones Alice had built herself? And if it wasn’t Alice pushing him away before he could try?

What _was_ it?

But the answer was easy, wasn’t it? Easy enough that even rigid little _Alice Knows Best_ , who could solve every riddle that came from a book and none of the ones that came from real, flesh-and-blood _people_ , could see it.

Quentin looked down at he and Eliot’s joined hands, interlacing their fingers so that they were palm to palm. “So-- what?” he asked quietly. “I’m just supposed to-- let you die?”

Eliot sighed, letting his head drop to one side. “It’s not like it’s happening tomorrow,” he said. When Quentin looked up to glare at him for that, he squeezed their joined hands, and added, “I’m not trying to-- I _mean_ it. Thirty years, Q. That isn’t nothing.”

“I wanted _fifty_ ,” Quentin answered without hesitating, echoing that same, almost mystical number again. 

“Baby, I want a _hundred_ ,” Eliot said, letting his eyes drop shut. “But I’d rather have thirty with you, and with that young lady over there with the frankly _stunning_ features--” he gestured back to Theo, who had tears shining in her eyes, and was ignoring them just as valiantly as Eliot was his own-- “than risk _zero_ , because you think you have to play the big damn hero to matter.” 

Quentin frowned, absorbing that. Alice could practically see him him trying to make the idea take hold in his own broken brain. “But I _love_ you,” he finally said-- like he couldn’t figure out how to make that part compute, how to love someone without giving them everything, even the things they didn’t want. 

The answer was easy, though. The answer was--

Eliot’s eyes narrowed, all of their dewy softness burning away, even as they stayed tear-bright. He used the hands still laced with Quentin’s to give one more mighty tug, bringing Quentin to the very edge of the window seat. 

“You love me, motherfucker?” he said, eyes fierce, voice stern. There was nothing romantic in it; there _shouldn’t_ have been anything romantic in it. Except for the way the question echoed, almost perfectly, Eliot’s desperate profanity that day that he broke free in the park, the way the sharp pull _now_ mirrored his clumsy shove at Quentin’s shoulder _then_ . Nothing romantic at all, except for the way that every cell in Eliot’s body was practically humming with how badly he wanted to protect Quentin from everything, even ( _especially_ ) himself. 

Nothing romantic, except for the way that Quentin stared, slack-jawed and transfixed and _listening_.

“Then _live_ for me,” Eliot said, staring Quentin down, voice cracking at last. 

Alice held her breath, watching the two of them from across the room, knowing that this was the part, in her memories, or maybe just her imaginings, where Quentin would say _no_ and _but I have to_ and _you don’t know what you’re asking_. 

Except-- 

He didn’t. This time. 

Because the _answer_ \-- God, it was so simple. 

The _answer_ was that Quentin had never actually been waiting for someone who wouldn’t tell him no, for all of Alice’s bitter bullshit to the contrary. He’d been _waiting_ for someone who would tell him no but then hold him close anyway. And who’d let _him_ hold them, too, just as tight as he needed.

The answer was _Eliot_ , on his knees, his eyes wet and unblinking as his thumbs tried to stroke his truth into Quentin’s skin. 

And the answer was _Quentin_ , catching the tear finally coursing its way down Eliot’s cheek with his own thumb, impossibly tender. 

And nodding.

And saying, hoarse but gentle, “Okay, yeah. Okay.” 

The _answer_ was easy.

And it was nothing Alice could ever offer. 

But what Alice _could_ offer was--

“I’ve got to--” she mumbled to no one, as she bustled through the cottage, past Theo hiding her face in her hands, and Eliot hiding his face in Quentin’s lap. Out the door, moving with purpose. Across the sea, and up the steps. And into the books and the riddles that she _could_ solve. 

_Library Main Branch, The Neitherlands - July 2047_

“--there’s another way,” Theo finished, Eliot’s secretive Cheshire smile spreading across her face. 

Alice frowned. “Theo-- what are you--” She shook her head, and started the tuts that would summon the card catalog entry for Bechshler’s _Ars Mnemonica_ (assuming Joanne in Circulation hadn’t fucked up the index again). 

“You know, I have to conclude you’re being willfully obtuse about this,” Theo said, as she flopped with a sigh onto Alice’s pristine white-leather desk chair. 

(The chair-- it had been the first of Zelda’s things that Alice had replaced, after she’d already been camped out in the office for months, putting out fires and logging the losses. He-- _Eliot_ had hobbled in one day, ostensibly with a missive from Fen, really because Quentin had stormed in the day before, yelling that Chatwin’s Torrent was gone and pointing as many fingers as weren’t squarely fixed on himself directly at Alice. _I don’t know, the decor just doesn’t say_ Quinn _to me_ , Eliot had mused, one hand on his hip, the other gripping the cane he’d been using to get around, as he’d recovered from the (surficial) effects of Everett’s attack. _I’m thinking white is your power color. Only a woman with unassailable control chooses white upholstery._ Alice had snorted at the memory, years later, as she’d watched Greg’s hands-- with their layers of scars-- grip the back of the matching white leather couch in the far corner, while she’d guided his other hand, and he’d teased _remember when you thought you didn’t give commands during sex?_ into the shivering skin at the nape of her neck.) 

Alice dropped her hands, mid-tut, and turned to Theo. “You _know_ how Lucy’s spell works,” she said. “If you can’t cast the second half on-- on _Eliot_ in the present, then--”

“ _Exactly_ ,” Theo said, digging her hands into the chair’s still-impeccable upholstery and leaning forward. “ _If_ I can’t cast the second half on him in the present, then, yes, we’re fucked--” 

Alice sighed, but Theo continued. “But. If I _can_ . . .”

She widened those eyes in the way that Alice recognized meant _understand me, understand me_.

And Alice-- 

_Did_.

But--

“That’s impossible,” Alice said quickly. “Lucy’s spell can’t--”

But she trailed off, because the images, the _possibilities_ , were already taking root, another one digging in with each breathless sparkle of Theo’s too-mischievous eyes.

_Theo_ , hugging her dad again, their twin sets of hazel eyes shut tight as each pretended not to cry.

_Fen_ , not bothering to hide her own tears, fussing at Eliot, insisting that he needed to eat something, in that way that was more mother than wife.

_Margo_ , actually crying-- for, _God_ , maybe the first time since it had happened. Maybe the only way she’d ever allow it-- while holding all six feet of his body with the barely five feet of her own, squeezing tight, the way she had exactly one time before, when Eliot had taken his first step in months that wasn’t dictated by a monster.

_Alice_ \--

Well. That part wasn’t important. 

But, _Quentin--_

Oh, God. 

_Quentin_ \--

  


_Brakebills University, New York - July 2019_

Alice’s pulse was jumping wildly as she made her way back across campus, somewhat-stolen library books jostling together in her arms. Her own watch-- delicate silver links and petite pearlescent face, nothing like Theo’s punk-rock monstrosity-- was hidden beneath the flapping edge of the coffee-stained pamphlet with the profanity scrawled across the cover in Mayakovsky’s nearly illegible handwriting. But she knew, from when she’d checked before she’d scooped everything she could fit in her arms off of the table on the third floor ( _C.Q., still carved in the leftmost leg_ ), that she still had-- nearly five hours.

It might not--

It would _have_ to be enough time.

If it-- 

If she was--

_Right_ , the niffin and the mouse supplied together. _If we’re right_.

She picked up her pace as she reached the cottage’s lawn. It was the middle of the night, but she still almost expected to see Eliot manning the grill, in boat shoes and Ray-Bans, Quentin dressed for a whole other season, but still holding the plate for the finished burgers happily at his side. She almost expected to see Theo there, too, flopped regally on one of the chaise longues, floating electric-colored drinks to an unknown horomancy student and-- to other students, too, maybe. ( _Lucy. And Charlie_ . Phosphoromancers, too, maybe? Or. Or-- _a pyromancy professor_ , Theo had said.)

Alice walked through them, the spirits of all those people who had or would make this place their home. She didn’t stop. That’s not who she was-- and it wasn’t what she had ever been here for, she thought, brushing past the ghost of a red-haired boy, who broke her heart, as he offered to help someone else, a butterfly landing delicately on the cuff of his shirt. 

When she pushed her way inside the front door, the common room was empty and dark, except for the still-burning fireplaces and the garish TADA blinking above the long table. Her heart climbed into her throat as she made her way up the stairs.

( _She’d worked as fast she could, looking for-- well, not even knowing what she was looking for. Starting with the stack of books that Fogg had brought over with his second deposit of Library loans-- the ones with clocks on the cover and with citations to Kikuno and to Harris and Duckoe, that neither Alice nor Theo had requested, but that Fogg had left without comment, after he’d taken one look at Theo when he brought over the first deposit, said_ ‘ah,’ _and left._ _Starting with those, then building out from there._ )

She wondered if she had missed the three of them, as she’d sifted through the pieces of Theo’s story again and again. If they had taken Theo back to Fillory-- to show her mom? To hold tight as a family, in the last hours they’d ever get all together, unless--

_Unless_.

Alice’s racing thoughts stilled when she reached the top of the stairs. The second-floor was completely dark-- except for one room, which _still_ wasn’t locked. Its cracked door let soft light and softer voices spill into the empty hallway. 

Alice came closer, but she stopped just outside where the light was pooling, hugging the jumble of books closer against her chest. From this angle, she couldn’t see anyone in the room, just the foot of the ornate bed and the corner of the dresser, with its spare change and the orange pill bottle that Quentin had glanced at so guiltily earlier, when Alice had asked him why he wasn’t in Fillory. 

Maybe it should have been uncomfortable, standing on the other side of a too-thin wall, again--

(Baby, I- _\- Eliot had sobbed toward the end, the loudest noise either of them had made, that night at Brakebills South. It had been followed moments later by the little hitched-breath gasp that Alice had only pretended, staring at the Binder’s still-burning candles, that she didn’t recognize as Quentin coming, too, crying, too._ )

\--but it wasn’t. The gently hushed voices this time made Alice want to draw close, but not enter. Like a little kid standing outside their parents’ door, listening to the sound of quiet conversation like a story, she imagined-- for kids whose parents’ doors hid things besides wild threats and messy sex and recriminations. 

“-- _should probably wake her up, soon,”_ Quentin was saying. 

“ _She still has a few more hours before she has to go back,”_ Eliot whispered back. “ _She looked so tired._ ”

“ _Yeah, but she’ll want to spend the time with you._ ”

“ _Hm,”_ Eliot answered-- not denying it, but not quite accepting it, either. “ _I suppose we_ could _use the time to try to squeeze out some more details about this alleged horomancer_ ‘friend’ _._ ”

Alice almost hear the waggle of Eliot’s eyebrows as he said _friend_ . When she tried to picture the easy grin that she knew must have accompanied Quentin’s low snort, she found she could only imagine it bathed in firelight, which felt-- _right_ , if bittersweet.

“ _Think you covered that ground when you poured her a double then asked if she and-- quote--_ The Watcherwoman-- _were practicing safe sex_ \--”

“ _In my defense, I_ only _know that reference because of you._ ”

“-- _God, I thought she was going to choke._ ”

“ _I take my sacred duty as a mortifying parent very seriously_ ,” Eliot returned easily. “ _You remember when Teddy started seeing Marin, right?_ ”

Quentin’s answering laugh went even softer-- a private thing. It made Alice suddenly and acutely aware that she was eavesdropping, and that the clock was ticking, and that she needed to knock and tell them what she’d-- _maybe_ \-- found.

Except that Quentin kept talking, the gentle laughter still in his voice, as he said, “ _Yeah, and Tali, and Elissa, and Rina, and the girl who built boats_ \--” and Eliot chuckled back and said, like he’d said it a thousand times before ( _fifty years before_ ), “ _well, he definitely inherited your taste in women._ ”

Logically, Alice had no idea how-- how what it sounded like they were saying could possibly be true. But there was no denying that it _felt_ true, somehow, as two sets of laughter faded slowly into an aching but shared silence. After a moment, Quentin took a deep breath in, then another and said, “ _He-- he always asked us for a little brother or sister._ ”

Eliot didn’t say anything for a moment-- at least, not anything that Alice could hear. There was the sound of lips against skin, though, then Quentin asked, “ _Do-- do you think we named her after_ \--”

“ _Of course we did_ ,” came the gentle answer.

Alice blinked hard at that, remembering the drop in her stomach, and the way that she’d flipped from skeptical and scoffing, to skeptical and-- and _longing_ , when Theo had followed up _Lucy_ with _and Charlie_.

On the other side of the door, there was movement, then settling. After, Quentin breathed out slowly and said, “ _She has your eyes, you know._ ”

Eliot hummed. “ _Well, lucky for both of us, she has your heart.”_

There was just silence for a long moment after that, silence and a soft, steady rustle-- like a hand combing through hair ( _exactly like a hand combing through hair_ ). “ _You have-- you have a good heart, too,_ ” Quentin finally said, _un_ steady, compared to the slow, rhythmic petting that continued. “ _It’s my favorite part of you_ . _It’s--_ fuck _, I_ hate _this_ \--”

( _The curse Everett used-- it attacked his heart_ , Theo had said. 

But _we were away when-- when it finally happened_ , she had also said. And _Aunt Alice was the one with him. She said it was peaceful_ \--)

Alice couldn’t see what kind of look Eliot had given in response to Quentin’s trembling words, but she could guess, from the way that Quentin sniffed and the sound of hands swiping roughly at skin. 

“ _Sorry, sorry-- you’re right,_ ” Quentin whispered, sniffing one more time. “ _Let’s just-- let’s enjoy the time we have, right?_ ”

Eliot didn’t say anything-- that Alice could hear, anyway. The soft stroking sound continued, though, and Quentin’s breathing deepened. 

Alice almost wondered whether Quentin had fallen asleep, when Eliot spoke again, quiet and hesitant. “ _You’ll be okay, won’t you?”_ he asked. “ _After?_ ”

When Quentin didn’t answer, Alice heard a hard swallow, and then Eliot asked again, even softer, “ _Q?_ ”

But Quentin just sighed and said, “ _I don’t-- really want to talk about it right now._ ”

After another still, suspended moment, she heard a throat clear, and then Eliot’s practiced nonchalant voice was back, saying, “ _In that case, can we revisit the notion that my_ heart _is your favorite part of me_ ? _Romantic as that may be, experience suggests that there are at least other_ contenders _for the title._ ”

Quentin groaned, still a little soggy, but laughing a little again, too. “ _God, you’re the worst,”_ he said, in a voice that made clear how little he meant it. 

There was more rustling, then, louder rustling, and another laugh, then Eliot saying, “ _Mm, yes. Appreciation noted, but maybe let’s save that thought for when our daughter isn’t asleep in the same room._ ”

He paused and then said more loudly, “And when Alice isn’t lurking outside the door.”

  


_Library Main Branch, The Neitherlands - July 2047_

“Lucy’s spell can’t _change_ the things that people remember, only add new things,” Theo was saying, as she swiveled back and forth in the white chair, buzzing with excitement. “I get it; I know. But not everything that people _think_ they remember is true in the first place, is it?”

Alice bit her lip, thinking of Julia’s memory patch and the fallout when Umber had yanked it away, and of the blue vials that Fogg had handed out in the wake of Alice’s own treachery, two years later. “ _Yes_ , but--”

“So what if the part where we think Dad is-- what if _that’s_ not true, either?” Theo said, like it was just that easy.

Alice shook her head, trying to wrap her head around the _scale_ of what Theo was suggesting. “But that’s-- Theo, you’re talking about literally everyone in the kingdom being under some kind of a-- a mass delusion that--”

“ _Except_ ,” Theo interrupted, “that there’s only _one_ person that actually _remembers_ Dad dying, not a whole kingdom. There’s only one person that was actually there.”

Theo’s eyes went even more intense, and Alice’s throat went dry.

_(I need to ask you for something horrible_ , Quentin had said.

_You don’t need to ask. I’ll stay with him._ )

“The rest of us just know what _you_ saw, Aunt Alice,” Theo said. “Or--” she paused, genetically incapable of _not_ upping the drama, even _now_ . “--what your memories _tell you_ you saw.”

Alice leaned back hard against the desk, sending the some of the haphazardly stacked horomancy books tumbling. “How--” she began to ask.

But Theo’s smirk went its widest and most knowing yet.

“Oh, Aunt Alice,” she sighed, shaking her head. “Come on. Who _else_ in this family could solve a problem _this_ hard?”

  


_Brakebills University, New York - July 2019_

The bedroom door swung wide, Eliot’s telekinesis giving it a nudge, and Alice stepped into the light. 

With the door open, Alice could see them now. Theo, curled up like a cat at the head of the bed, a blanket draped carefully over her shoulders as she napped. And Eliot and Quentin, on the floor at her side. Eliot sitting with his back against the nightstand. Quentin lying with legs bent-- his head in Eliot’s lap, Eliot’s hand curled into his hair. 

A perfect little family. 

“Are those for the memory wipe?” Eliot asked, nodding at the books Alice was still clutching in her arms. Quentin tensed as he said it, and Eliot’s hand gave another soothing stroke.

She didn’t belong in this little family. There was no place for her here.

Except--

“ _Aunt Alice_?”

Theo sat up, groggy and half-squinting, at the new noises in the room. “What’s up?” she asked, eyes opening wider, as she stretched her long arms.

Alice looked at her, and then at Eliot, and then, last, to Quentin. 

“I think,” she started, more mouse than her niffin part, but more niffin than her mouse part, “I don’t know. This may be-- _God_ , crazy. But-- I think it’s not. I think--”

She stopped and Eliot raised his eyebrows. “Quinn. Cut the shy schoolgirl act and just spit it out already.”

She took a deep breath and flexed her fingers more tightly around the hard edges of her bounty. Breathed out. 

  
“ _I think I might have figured out how to fix it_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it! 
> 
> As a quick schedule update: while my original plan was to post chapters M/W/F, I have some life responsibilities that have come up that will mess with my plans, so I'm going to compress the schedule to get this thing out while I still have a minute. Chapter 6 will go up Monday (tomorrow), Chapter 7 on Wednesday, Chapter 8 on Friday, and then we'll wrap with Chapter 9 on Saturday!
> 
> NEXT TIME: In 2028, Eliot is not a very good patient, but he is a good partner-- and a good friend.


	6. VI. THEN

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Twenty years before Theo goes to the past, Quentin, Eliot, and Alice all try to deal with the fallout of the fight with Everett.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to everyone who is continuing to read this behemoth! I can't tell you how much I appreciate your support. This flashback chapter sheds some more light on why exactly future Alice feels so guilty over what happens to Eliot. There are also a few more little clues in here (as in all the flashbacks) about how exactly the gang ends up fixing things in the main threads of the story-- which will be revealed in the next chapter! 
> 
> Also, small shout out in this chapter to my favorite piece of random interior decor I've ever written into a scene. In my defense, I feel utterly confident that Eliot would in fact choose to hang it on his wall.

VI. THEN

_Whitespire Castle, Fillory - September 2028 [Earth-date equivalency]_

Alice hesitated outside of Quentin and Eliot’s private chambers, knuckles hovering an inch in front of the heavy wooden door.

A year ago, she probably wouldn’t have hesitated-- not for this long, anyway. A year ago, she probably would have just knocked, secure ( _mostly_ secure) in her welcome. But a year ago, she’d _finally_ had space in her relationship with the people on the other side of the door for things besides resentment and second-guessing and the overwhelming _guilt_ that was tightening her throat, like she hadn’t felt in a decade, not since she had found herself alone on a bus to California, the memory of disintegrating keys and a burning candle still hot behind her eyelids. A year ago, Quentin had actually been _talking_ to her, not just throwing accusations that echoed the ones inside her own head, the ones that Greg let her say into the space between their pillows after they’d put Lucy down for the night, his bandaged hands light against her back. A year ago, Eliot had been--

Alice exhaled, lowering her hand and bringing it to lay flat against her enormous belly and the squirmy little person inside. It didn’t really soothe either of them.

( _Time to break out the virgin daiquiris again_? Eliot had asked under his breath over brunch six months ago, with Theo asleep in his lap, while Lucy took Alice’s shoe off and on underneath the table, and Greg and Q were distracted by swapping halting but enthusiastic opinions about _Battlestar Galactica_. Alice and Greg hadn’t told anyone yet, but Eliot’s eyes had sparkled knowingly all the same. _I can hardly blame you_ , he’d drawled, with what she’d gathered was supposed to be a lascivious look at Greg’s dark hair and Clark Kent-glasses and the tattoos poking out from under his rolled sleeve. _You know, I could be persuaded to switch models some time, if you’re ever feeling nostalgic for our Brakebills days_ , he’d added with a leer that was spoiled by the fact that his eyes were already back on Quentin, helplessly fond, as Quentin knocked over a glass of water mid-gesture. Alice had rolled her eyes and tried not to smile, and Eliot had paused in floating a stack of gold-edged linen napkins down to where Quentin was wiping at at the puddled water with his sleeve, to sigh and say _ugh, fine; no more seducing your paramours. Cross my heart and hope to_ \--)

The quiet on the other side of the closed door was broken by a sudden, ragged inhale that sounded liked it _hurt_ \-- no matter how quickly it was choked off. Alice winced, making the brand-new leather bag on her shoulder bang against her hip, the hard corner of one of the books jammed inside jabbing her always-full bladder.

“ _Sorry-- um. Just one more._ ”

That was Quentin’s voice, small and flat-- and in just as much pain, if you listened closely enough, Alice thought.

“ _Mm, Mr. Coldwater_ .” Eliot’s voice was strained but defiantly teasing-- the way it had sounded the few times he had spoken up during the meeting Alice had set up to propose the new portal system to Fillory’s royal council that morning, before Quentin had led him out of the throne room, stone-faced, to change his bandages. “ _If I had known you had such an aptitude for painplay, I would have_ \--”

Whatever Eliot would have done with the knowledge was cut off by another sharp gasp.

Quentin didn’t say anything, but Alice could hear a dull thud like a wet cloth hitting the ground, then the rustling of a fresh bandage being unrolled, then a low hiss that Eliot tried to disguise as a hum, presumably as Quentin smoothed the new bandage onto his mangled skin.

“ _You can put your shirt back on now,_ ” Quentin said, monotone, after a last, swallowed-down groan ended in a shaky exhale. 

“ _What’s the hurry?_ ” Eliot barely got the words out, his voice was shaking that noticeably. He still managed to make them sound playful. 

Quentin’s footsteps as he bustled around the room sounded a lot less playful.

“ _C’mon, baby_ .” That was Eliot again, pausing to clear some of the gravel from his throat. “ _Bring those magic fingers over here,_ ” he wheedled _._ “ _Let’s try a little laying on of hands_.”

It was one of those over-the-top come-ons that Eliot prided himself on bringing out in front of company-- the ones designed to make people think of Quentin and Eliot as the kind of couple that might be fucking around any corner, when in reality, Alice suspected they might be the most private couple _in_ Whitespire (even including the couple Fen and Margo were still pretending _not_ to be): the secret beat of their hearts, like the decades of alternate history that everyone else only knew the outlines of, shared only with each other. 

Normally, Alice would have rolled her eyes at Eliot’s attempt to play the deviant, because the secret beat of her own heart-- the mostly hidden part of her that appreciated how Eliot worked so hard to never let Quentin forget that he was an object of constant desire but also never let Quentin see that that was what Eliot was doing-- wasn’t widely shared, either. 

Today, she settled for biting hard on her lower lip. 

Inside the closed room, Quentin’s shuffling steps continued, then stopped abruptly, as the mattress shifted. He sighed, long and frustrated.

“ _Minor mending doesn’t work on skin_ ,” he finally said, still inflection-less.

The mattress shifted again. “ _Fortunately, that’s not_ really _what I was suggesting_. . .” 

“ _Come on, El_ \--”

“ _No,_ you _come on. Mmmph, babylove, it’s been so long_ \--”

The needy slide of Eliot’s still-hoarse voice was interrupted by the abrupt creak of springs and fast, angry footsteps. 

“ _My hands are_ literally _covered in your blood right now, Eliot. I don’t want to_ \--” 

Quentin cut himself off, and Eliot laughed, ugly and hurting. 

Out in the hall, Alice hiked her heavy bag up on her shoulder, and jerked away from the door, her face suddenly flaming. The conversation inside the room had taken a sharp but undeniable turn to a place that she doubted that she-- or anyone but Quentin and Eliot themselves, really, and maybe not even them-- belonged. But she’d barely taken one slow, waddling step away, when Eliot huffed out, more sad than angry, and still loud enough for her to hear, “ _And what will the excuse be tomorrow, I wonder?_ ”

Before Quentin could answer (if he would have answered), Eliot was sighing and saying, “ _Fine_ . _If you’re not interested, then we might as well stop being appallingly bad hosts._ ”

The door swung open without any further warning. 

Alice, already several steps down the hall, froze, her back going tense, like she’d been caught somewhere she didn’t belong ( _because she had_ ). Digging her short black nails into her palms, she made herself turn back on her soft gray ballet flats. She stood squarely in the doorframe, then reached out suddenly to hold onto the door jamb with white knuckles. The posture was closer to a slouch than she would usually allow herself, but her soon-to-be son had started kicking again, like he was committed to physically doing to Alice’s insides what her thoughts had been trying metaphorically to do since the day a month and a half ago that Kady had shown up on her doorstep, Harriet in tow, and said that Everett had Eliot, and Zelda was about to make a terrible mistake.

Alice tried not to look as out of place as she felt, standing there gripping the door, but it was hard to feel anything but unwelcome, when the first thing she saw was Quentin, livid and grim, standing with folded arms in front of a tapestry depicting two very well-endowed unicorns making love, as far away from the elaborately carved bed as he could get.

(Eliot’s Moroccan decor phase had given way a year or two before to a medieval English phase, which was gradually being taken over by a thrift-store bohemian phase. The resulting hybrid style was beginning to bear an uncanny resemblance to the Physical Cottage, especially with Quentin’s piles of books and the photos that Julia had developed for them on Earth on every spare surface, and the rams’ head clock that once served as a portal but now only had sentimental value, tucked away in the corner. Quentin’s lost and grieving look fit right in with their Brakebills years, too.)

Alice looked away from Quentin quickly, but not quickly enough to miss the way his scraped-raw look went pissed and irritated when he saw her-- another relic from an earlier era. 

Looking at Eliot, who was sitting shirtless and gray-tinged in the center of the massive bed, was also a mistake. Fine lines-- nearly iridescent except for their weeping, bloody edges-- covered almost every inch of his torso, branching out from his sternum ( _no, behind that_ ) like the scorch marks that followed a lightning strike, too numerous for Quentin’s carefully placed bandages to cover. 

Their delicacy, the almost prettiness of the lines, made them look disturbing and unnatural, in a way that even Greg’s horrible burns didn’t.

Alice felt her mouth pull down into a frown, before she could stop herself.

“Yes, that seems to be the general consensus,” Eliot said calmly, offering her half of a smile, before turning his eyes back to Quentin.

Quentin shook his head and stalked over to the bed, picking up the basket of bloody bandages left on the floor at Eliot’s side. “I’m going to bring these down to the laundry,” he muttered to the thick peach-and-purple rug, apparently unwilling to intentionally speak to either of the people in the room. 

“ _Q_ ,” Eliot said, somewhere between lecturing and whining (laced with a touch of begging that Alice was pretending not to have heard). 

Quentin paused, just for a moment, but then he put the basket on his hip and headed for the door.

Eliot reached for him, but had to stop with a grunt when he overextended himself. Alice lurched forward, like she did every time Lucy made an _oof_ or an _ow_ these days, but Quentin was half a room closer, and he turned back to Eliot in an instant.

“God, don’t-- _here_ ,” he said, annoyed but unbearably soft, as he dropped the basket on the bed and settled Eliot carefully back against the pillows, as gentle as he might be with Theo. One hand soothed the line of Eliot’s shoulder-- the one part of Eliot’s torso that was mostly unmarked by Everett’s sadistic spell. 

Eliot blinked up at him adoringly, and Quentin moved to pull away, but Eliot stopped him with a hand around his wrist. 

“Thank you,” Eliot said around a hard swallow, “for taking care of me.” His voice rose up at the end like it was a question-- or like it was easier to pretend that it was. “I know I’m not a very good patient,” he added, casting his eyes down to where the fingers of his free hand were twisting in the damask bedspread.

Alice couldn’t see Quentin’s face from where she was still hovering in the doorframe, but she heard him exhale slowly through his mouth, and saw him bend to press a hard kiss to the top of Eliot’s head, one hand coming up to palm the crown. He cradled Eliot for a long moment against his lips.

“I’ll-- um. Soon. _Soon_ ,” he repeated into Eliot’s hair, not really sounding like he was just talking about the laundry schedule.

“Do you promise?” Eliot asked quietly, uncertainty or emotion (or both) making the words waver.

Quentin just nodded his head against Eliot’s hair. Then he turned without another word and hurried toward the door. Alice moved to one side to let him pass. He stopped just long enough to give her the devastated-furious face that she had naively allowed herself to hope that she was done seeing from him, before blinking rapidly and walking past her. 

The slam of the door as he exited the room rattled the frame.

“It’s not _you_ he’s really mad at, you know.” 

Eliot’s words, which came only after Quentin’s hurried footsteps became too faint to hear, sounded almost casual. 

_He should be_ , Alice wanted to say. _It’s my fault_ . But when she lifted her gaze from the tile entryway to say it, she stopped. Because, Eliot’s _eyes_ , as he stared at the empty doorway--

They made Alice think that he didn’t need _her_ attempts at a confession, on top of everything else. 

“I should--” she started to say, half-turning toward the door, fiddling with a strand of hair that was already tucked behind her ear. But Eliot was speaking over her, still not looking away from the door.

“You’ll-- look after him, won’t you? _After_?”

He said it like it was an afterthought. Like he was just-- confirming something they both already knew. There was something about the level of trust in the not-really-a-question, or maybe just in the way he wasn’t bothering to hide the longing and the worry in his eyes, as he continued to stare at the spot where Quentin had disappeared, that wouldn’t let Alice insult the moment by asking _who_ she was supposed to take care of, and _when_ , or to offer the usual platitudes about how Lipson was confident that they could slow the curse’s progress, that it might be years or even decades.

But, whatever the thing blocking those trite responses was, it wouldn’t let Alice say much of anything _else_ , either. And eventually Eliot slid his gaze away from the door, and two feet to the right, to where Alice was standing, hands knotted together on the strap of her bag.

“I’m not-- I’ve never been very good with-- with knowing how to comfort him,” she offered weakly, after submitting for several long moments to Eliot’s examination. That had been the whole problem with her and Quentin’s romantic relationship-- or one of them anyway. Quentin had wanted-- well, he’d wanted _Eliot._ Warm and engaged and affectionate, centered fully on Quentin, even when he was using that focus to try to bully Quentin out of preemptively mourning him, or whatever had been happening while Alice had waited outside their door.

It was a kind of loving that wasn’t-- It wasn’t-- the _way_ Alice loved.

Eliot seemed to realize that. The dismay on his face was instantaneous, as was the faint amusement. “Oh, God no. Please. Let Julia handle the worst of the shoulder-crying. Or Fen. I just meant, be there for him-- in _your_ way. When he’s ready.”

Alice wasn’t really sure what _way_ she could possibly offer to Quentin, given how her brass-tacks response to disaster always seemed to irritate him-- even when he _didn’t_ blame her for the disaster in question.

But Eliot was intent. “Alice, _please_ ,” he said. The almost-begging note was back in his voice again, and just as hard to hear-- maybe even harder, now that _she_ was the one who was supposed to do something to calm it. “I just-- I need to know that he’s-- that they-- that it’s all right,” he said, eyes shading toward desperate.

It reminded Alice, uncomfortably, of when Penny had brought Fen to the Brakebills infirmary with little Theo, after the fight at the Main Branch was over and Eliot had been stabilized, and the way Eliot had buried his face in the dark curls that matched his own when Quentin had taken one look at the two together and walked out the door, an apologetic Julia at his heels. Alice had slipped out to the room down the hall, where a healing student was running a nerve-damage detection spell on Greg’s forearms, and felt ashamed at the _relief_ that had overwhelmed her, because the person _she_ needed to know was okay actually _was_.

Alice found that her throat was choked shut again, but she nodded-- deliberate, if not as steady as she would have liked.

It seemed to be enough for Eliot. The lines of his shoulders relaxed, and his mouth once again assumed the teasing lilt that Alice had spent their school years dreading, assuming always that it was the lead-up to some cruel joke. The shift was fast enough to give Alice whiplash.

“So I see you’ve given some consideration to my advice regarding power colors,” he said, breezy once more (or as breezy as he could sound when his voice was still so hoarse), with an approving nod at the bright white bag on Alice’s shoulder. He looked at her evenly, like he was challenging her to say it was anything other than perfectly normal to go in the span of a breath from pleading with Alice to watch over his grieving widower to debating accessories. 

Alice ducked her head, remembering Eliot’s solo trip to Zelda’s-- to _Alice_ ’s office, the week before. He’d hitched a ride from Penny, who Alice gathered was still offering door-to-door service mostly because he had no other way of expressing sympathy-- and certainly no other way that Eliot would actually accept. Even still, it had been clear from the way Eliot had slumped over his cane as he surveyed the dark, heavy wood paneling of the office that he shouldn’t have travelled out of his _bedroom_ , let alone to another planet. Alice would have been tempted to write the trip off as cabin fever, if not for the careful way Eliot had pretended not to know about _Quentin_ ’s visit to The Neitherlands not twenty-four hours earlier, and the recriminations Quentin had thrown at Alice, and the cold barrier Alice had put up against his accusations, because actually _being_ the frigid, authoritarian bitch that Quentin wanted to belive she still was, was easier than admitting that she didn’t _know_ what she was or what she was supposed to be, as she watched him press his hands against his forehead and shout _it’s gone just like you always wanted_ and _now I have no way to fucking-_ -

The kid started kicking again, and Alice pressed her hand tighter against her belly.

The uncaring look Eliot had put on dropped away. “Would you please just sit down already?” he sighed.

“Seriously,” he added. “You look like you’re going to pop if you stand any longer, and my heart literally cannot withstand that kind of excitement.”

Quentin wasn’t in the room, but that didn’t stop Alice from picturing the little furrow between his eyebrows, the slack, disbelieving drop of his mouth. The way he looked every time Eliot threw his-- what was happening to him, in Quentin’s face. 

She chewed her lip, quietly, as she walked to the rich leather chair beside Quentin and Eliot’s bed, the one that reminded her of the ever-burning fire in the Physical Cottage hearth. It had always surprised her that Eliot hadn’t thought to add a fireplace to this room, along with all the rest of his ever-changing interior-design spells; they’d loved the one at the cottage enough. But then, she considered as she watched Eliot run a hand absently over the wicker handle of the basket that Quentin had claimed to be bringing to the laundry and then abandoned in his haste to leave, maybe it had never really been the fire that they loved.

Eliot took one look at her rigid teacher’s pet posture on the edge of the chair and her folded hands and rolled his eyes. “ _Feet_ ,” he said, voice commanding, like he was asking _her_ to do something for _him_.

“I don’t think--” Alice started to say, but Eliot just repeated himself, patting the empty spot beside him on the almost-comically sumptuous bedding.

“My _hands_ still work, Quinn,” he said, careless. But not even his pointedly casual look could hide the flash of hurt behind his eyes when he added, “whatever Q may think.”

Alice exhaled softly. “You know he’s-- he’s just worried about making your injuries worse.”

Eliot snorted. “He’s just worried that if he actually accepts that we have to enjoy the time we’ve got, then he’ll have stop beating himself up for--” Eliot cut himself off, and schooled his expression back to something placid. “Come on,” he said lightly, tapping the bedspread once more. “Up.”

Alice was dubious at his attempt to push his feelings down, but she also knew that taking care of his friends and his family was usually the thing he needed before he could make _himself_ feel any better. She found herself scooting back in the chair, straightening her legs and raising her feet. She set them down hesitantly on the very edge of the bed, which Eliot answered with a look of motherly exasperation. He grabbed first one, then the other, peeling off the pigeon-gray flats with the little bows, and then placing the bare soles gently in his lap. The shoes he tossed off one side of the bed. He eyed the dull pile they made on the saturated carpet, before letting his skeptical gaze rove upwards, from Alice’s sensible gray maternity slacks to her delicate pink-and-black smocked blouse, to the pin-straight hair that hung a little shorter than it did when they first met, just above her shoulders.

“What?” she asked, pressing her lips together quickly, to cut off the happy little sound that wanted to come out as he dug his thumb into her arch. 

He gave a short hum that said she hadn’t fooled him. “Oh, nothing,” he said. “It’s just here _I_ thought becoming head librarian would mean that it was all victory rolls and red nail polish from here on out.”

Alice grimaced without meaning to, and he laughed in a way that she probably would have assumed was mean, once. “Oh, don’t get me wrong,” he said around the ghost of a smirk, “it’s not a criticism. In fact, I would consider it a personal favor to the longevity of my pseudo-marriage if you _never_ wore victory rolls or red nail polish.”

Alice didn’t know what to say that. She never really knew what to say to the small but vocal part of Eliot that still seemed to suspect that Quentin might just be one romcom moment away from realizing it had been _Alice_ that he’d wanted all along-- nevermind that Quentin had _had_ Alice, once, and even then, it had been _Eliot_ that he couldn’t help falling into bed then love then _fifty years_ with. It was an awkward subject on a good day, when Eliot was lifting Theo easily onto his hip, and Quentin was rolling his eyes and flipping him off, and Greg was smiling, unconcerned because he never seemed to judge Alice for the mess of her past ( _well, you don’t judge me for the things I’ve done, either, and mine are_ \--). It was an _impossible_ subject when Eliot was still visibly hurt by Quentin’s perceived rejection and Quentin’s renewed disdain for Alice hung heavy in the air.

Eliot seemed to realize it wasn’t a fair comment, and he gave her toes a squeeze as he bent them back, one after the other. “Sorry. I just meant-- I’m _glad_ you haven’t changed. My continued doubts about your sartorial choices notwithstanding,” he added quickly.

( _You could have done worse_ , he’d said as he surveyed the tea-length white dress that she’d worn to marry Greg. Quentin had pinched his side hard, then harder, when he’d turned to Greg, extended a hand, and said, _mm,_ much _worse_.)

He worked both thumbs into the ball of her right foot, then. And if Alice wasn’t so distracted by trying not to groan from sheer _relief_ , she might have suspected, from the great attention he was suddenly paying to her purplish-grey pedicure, that he was about to admit something he found embarrassingly genuine.

As it was, she hadn’t had time to put any defenses up, when he said, softly, “I guess I’m just saying I’d rather see the Library become more like Alice Quinn, than the other way around.”

It was oddly intimate, listening to Eliot’s quiet affirmation as he rubbed her aching feet. Or maybe it was only odd for _her_ , Alice thought, remembering the way Margo and Eliot used to lay all over each other in the cottage’s common room, and Eliot’s snorted explanation when Alice had asked him, the first time around, how he was _so good_ at this (-- _this was, like, the only one of Fen’s hormonal pregnancy needs that I could service without half a bottle of wine and the promise of Q’s dick after--_ ), and even the way he would braid Julia’s hair sometimes, while she told Quentin about her latest archaeological find. Alice had so few references for how to be physically close to someone in a way that wasn’t Greg holding her down in their bed, or Lucy staring up at her with that bottomless, awe-inspiring trust. Even with Quentin, who was-- who _had been_ , her _best_ friend-- they had still just been learning the magical combination of hugs and shoulder claps that didn’t carry uncomfortable echoes of all the things they _weren’t_ to each other, anymore. The ease of this moment, the uncomplicated comfort of it (even if it was only a comfort she was willing to accept when she was eight-and-a-half-months pregnant and had climbed three floors of winding stone stairs in shoes that had no arch support), it made her feel--

( _don’t you-- forget about me_ )

\-- _safe_. Safe enough to share other kinds of intimacy, too. 

She tucked her hair behind her glasses, and looked away, glancing at that ridiculous unicorn tapestry, before making herself meet Eliot’s eyes.

“I’m not really sure how different those two are,” Alice said, matching Eliot’s hushed tone. “The old Library, and--” _me_ , she didn’t say. 

Eliot’s hands stilled against her ankles. “I told you that Q-- you shouldn’t pay too much attention to what he said the other day. He was upset about Chatwin’s Torrent-- and. And it’s not really about you.”

Alice pulled her feet back, because apparently one kind of intimacy at a time was her limit after all. (And maybe, _maybe_ because a muscle in his side kept twitching, the longer he sat upright, despite his insistence that he was fine.) 

“He’s not wrong though, is he?”

Eliot’s eyes blazed in a way that Alice suspected had more to do with whatever Eliot believed was _really_ bothering Quentin, if it wasn’t the stupid little mouse that had sat on her hands when she should have been noticing the the way the pieces were falling into place. “He _is_ wrong.” 

“I just meant,” she started, then stopped and forced herself to raise chin. “He’s not wrong about _me_ . I’m still the bitch who destroyed the keys, remember?”

Eliot turned away with a scowl. “Jesus, the two of you. Haven’t we talked through the key thing before-- like, ad nauseum? Why do you insist on punishing yourselves for things that happened a literal _decade_ ago?”

_Because what if I’m still doing the same things?_ Alice wanted to ask. But instead she set her jaw and said, “I didn’t trust that people could use magic wisely, so I tried to keep it away from them. Is that really any different from what Zelda thought she was doing when she drained the reservoir?”

“Maybe not,” Eliot huffed, “but--”

“But _what_ ?” Alice crossed her arms over her heavy belly, ignoring the kicks that grew in time with her agitation, fighting the urge to literally twist away from the ( _undeserved_ ) absolution Eliot was trying to give her. “It’s not _just_ about the keys, and what I did back then, and you know it. And Quentin knows it. It’s why he looks at me like he _hates_ me again.”

“Alice . . .” Eliot sighed, but he didn’t say anything more, like he knew she needed the space to say the rest, to get it _out_ , to someone other than Greg and his comforting arms in their bed at night, and Sheila and her motherly looks as they worked on putting the detritus of the Main Branch back together.

“Zelda asked me to join the Order, to help watch Everett _years_ before he-- before everything,” she said. “But I said _no_ , because I was-- because I was a stupid, mousy little bitch--”

“Intense,” Eliot interjected, the casual tone at odds with the concern in his eyes. “Listen, far be it from me to impugn your well-established genius, but there’s no guarantee that even if you’d been working for the Order, you would have been able to stop Everett--”

This time, Alice interrupted. “No, but I could have stopped _Zelda_.”

She bit her lip, unable to meet Eliot’s eyes, as she made herself continue.

“Zelda came to me again, a few weeks before Everett-- before he tried to get to the secret sea,” Alice admitted. “She didn’t-- she didn’t tell me exactly what was happening, but she was asking about-- about _draining_ spells. She wanted to know if I’d seen anything-- _powerful_ , when I was a niffin.”

“Did you--?” 

Alice didn’t look up at Eliot, but she could guess at how carefully neutral his expression must be, from how carefully even his voice was.

She shook her head, then snorted, heavy with self-derision. “ _Stripping_ magic wasn’t really something I had a particular interest in, when I was a niffin. I didn’t help her, but-- but I didn’t _stop_ her, either. I didn’t tell her not to do it, whatever it was she was planning. I didn’t want to-- I didn’t want to have to make a _choice_. I just wanted to keep-- ”

She did look up at Eliot then, even though the _understanding_ in his eyes was almost more than she could take. “Don’t you get it?” she said, all the anger at herself coming out as annoyance at _him_ , the person who deserved it least of all, and who was already suffering the most-- worse even than Quentin, because while Quentin was terrified by losing Eliot, _Eliot_ had to be terrified about what would happen to him, _and_ what Quentin would do after. “Even if I couldn’t have stopped Everett from going after you,” she continued, “if I had stopped Zelda, then at least we’d still have Chatwin’s Torrent. And if we still had the Torrent--”

She couldn’t quite make herself say the rest of it. Instead, she drew her arms across her belly, a silent apology to the little person inside, for not doing more to make the world less shitty for him and his sister and everyone else. “So maybe I _am_ still the girl who destroyed the keys.”

Eliot didn’t say anything for a moment. “Except that this time you regret it,” he finally said. “And not just because of--” he gestured down at the ghastly ruptures across his chest-- “either, I think?”

At Eliot’s question, Alice’s mind flew back immediately to those first days after Everett had been defeated, the dark and the quiet of the little house in Modesto, Greg’s skin beneath Alice’s own, and Lucy sleeping safe and sound just a room away.

( _Alice kept her hands steady as she dabbed at the charred and ruined skin of Greg’s careful hands. He’d had scars as long as she’d known him, but she was ashamed to realize that she’d never truly understood, until now, that the fine white spiderwebs she was used to had started out like this once-- red and raw and closer to meat than a body._

_“It’s-- it’s been a long time since I lost control of it like that. Since-- since I was a teenager, probably. Before I’d met anyone who could-- who could tell me what I was. And to control it.”_

_His voice was quiet, as always, and his shoulders were hunched._

_Alice knew that another kind of partner-- the kind she used to think she was supposed to be, back when Quentin’s expression used to fall every time she’d say_ can we just focus on _\-- might have spoken back just as softly and said useless things about how it wasn’t his fault, and the flames had helped them beat back the last of Everett’s followers, and he’d only been trying to defend her and Lucy, anyway. But none of those words, no matter how true, would_ do _anything. So instead she flipped his hand over and started the tuts that would disinfect the ugly wounds on his palms, and said, hesitant but true, “There are books on pyromancy that haven’t left the poison room in centuries. Maybe there’s something in there that will help.”_

_Greg nodded, eyes still locked on his lap. He squeezed his eyes shut behind his glasses, but the tears didn’t start falling in earnest, until Alice had put a hand against his cheek-- her careful professor who spent hours with the students who came in the scaredest, who didn’t know who they even_ were-- and said “ _And if there_ is _something that helps,we can. . . we can make sure to make it public. So no one else has to lose control ever again.”_ )

She blushed and ducked her head. “What does regret matter?”

Eliot’s eyes, as they looked at her, were almost-- she would have called it _pity_ , once. The look in them. Except that now it felt more like-- _understanding._

There was no way Eliot could have known exactly where Alice’s thoughts had travelled. The two of them had gotten closer-- closer than Alice would have believed possible back when he was forcing holographic cocktails into her hand when all she wanted was to find out what happened to her _brother_ \-- but there were still some things that they both kept for themselves ( _the secret beat of their hearts_ ), no matter how many times Eliot pretended to boast about the depravities he inflicted on Q, or needled her about _if you had to rate Greg on a scale of English cucumber to eggplant_ \--

Even without sharing the specifics, though, there was something in Eliot’s eyes that said he _did_ understand. How it felt to sit in front of someone who made you feel like the things you had to give actually _mattered_ , even when there was nothing but a roll of bandages and a desperate desire to get it _right_ between you. The way it changed-- not _you_ , really. But the _you_ you thought you were.

“It _matters_ ,” Eliot was saying, “because there’s always a next time. Can you seriously tell me that the person you are today would destroy the keys, if you had to make the choice again?”

Alice thought of the first time she’d touched Greg’s two hedge stars, the hesitant _I’m not proud of the things I did, but I just needed to-- to know what I am, to learn how to_ use _it, and no one else would_ tell _me_ . She thought of Quentin, as he’d stormed into her office last week, the way he’d tried so hard not to cry on _and now I have no fucking way to_ help _him_. She thought of Kady’s hands, shaking with rage, years ago, as she’d described what Everett’s worm had done to the hedges. She thought even farther back than that, to Julia’s horror at learning where the spark of her goddesshood had come from, and to her own impotent fury when Quentin had forced her shade back inside her. 

She thought of the things that she’d done without that shade, the defenseless things she’d pulled apart, and the way that the monster and the mouse were both still inside her, leading her in opposite directions every day, on every question that came before her.

She reached up and gently touched the delicate pendant hanging at her throat.

“I think,” she said, “that I-- that it shouldn’t have been _my_ choice at all.” 

_That_ part was easy. Blaming things on her own shortcomings would always be easy. The hard part-- the _frightening_ part, the part that meant that it didn’t have to be on her all the time, but also that it _couldn’t_ be on her all the time-- came out slower. 

“I think-- I think maybe it shouldn’t be _any_ one person’s choice,” she said, raising her eyes to meet Eliot’s. 

It wasn’t the way their little group of world-savers usually operated, she knew that. It certainly wasn’t the way Quentin operated-- or, at least, it wasn’t the way he would _choose_ to operate, when Eliot wasn’t at his side murmuring _don’t rush into that burning building, baby, stay with me instead_. It wasn’t even the way Eliot himself always operated, for all that he endeavored to stop Quentin from playing the lone ranger-- not when he thought that a one-man plan to shoot a monster or even just to shoot off his mouth while Quentin tried not to cry over his bandages might be enough to push Quentin back from the ledge.

But as Alice looked at Eliot, he only smiled at her pronouncement-- genuine, but also tired. “Well,” he said. “That sounds like a better Library to me already.” 

He leaned back against the pillows then, his eyes shutting automatically, as he did. Even though he opened them again a few seconds later, Alice bent forward (with effort) to retrieve her shoes, seeing that it was time to go. 

“I-- I should let you get some rest,” she said. 

He made a noise of protest, but it wasn’t terribly convincing, especially given that his eyes had drifted shut again, his eyebrows drawing tight in pain he couldn’t quite hide anymore.

“Books to bind, people to see,” he hummed, eyes still closed.

She snorted and said, “more like books to _re_ bind,” letting him have the fiction that she was leaving for her own benefit rather than for his welfare. “Half of the east wing’s general collection got destroyed in the fight with Everett’s people.”

“Hmph, I got a lifetime ban for that kind of thing,” Eliot mused, sounding half-asleep already, in spite of the tense lines wrinkling his forehead. But then his eyes snapped open unexpectedly, and he cast a speculative look at Alice, who had finally gotten both shoes back on. “You know, Q really is excellent at small repairs,” he said, raising both of his dark eyebrows.

_Just-- be there for him?_ Eliot had asked her. _In_ your _way?_

In _Alice_ ’s way.

“I’ll ask him if he’d be willing to help,” she said, nodding. “Assuming he starts speaking to me again.”

Eliot’s answering smile was grateful, even though his eyes were closed again. “He will,” he said, already drifting away. “Your friendship means a lot to him.”

Alice didn’t give herself time to second-guess before she leaned forward and squeezed the unblemished spot on his shoulder that Quentin had soothed so gently earlier, before padding softly out of the room. 

When she reached the hallway, she wasn’t surprised to see Quentin there, sitting with his back against the wall and his eyes on the ceiling, only feet away in case Eliot needed him. She wasn’t surprised, either, when he scrambled to his feet and walked through the door that she had just exited, or at the quiet “ _just-- scooch over, okay?_ ” that drifted down the hall once he was inside. 

The surprise, she thought, rubbing her belly, had been the moment their eyes had met, when Quentin hadn’t scowled, or looked away, but only nodded his thanks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're moving into the home stretch! Stay tuned for a quest, a beginning, and a (happy) ending . . . Also, if you've been reading along thinking, I don't know, could use more Julia and/or Margo and/or Kady, you're in for a treat. 
> 
> NEXT TIME: Hey, hey, the gang's all here; a key development; a home.


	7. VII. NOW

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alice's plan to save Eliot turns into a team effort-- one that takes Alice somewhere new and Eliot somewhere old. Meanwhile, in 2047, Theo shows Alice that the key to their success has been close to her heart all along.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The plan to save Eliot is on! Thank you so much for taking the time to read and follow this twisting journey; I can only hope that this, the very twistiest installment, delivers. For me, all the turns wind up somewhere that says something true about these characters and what they mean to each other. I hope the story resonates for you, too! 
> 
> Also, this chapter also contains another of my all-time proudest Quentin/Eliot moments, and this time, Quentin is the star. . .

VII. NOW

_Library Main Branch, The Neitherlands - July 2019_

“Do you want me to start again from the top?”

Theo was sitting in Alice’s white leather chair, which she had rolled out from behind the desk to the center of the office, as Alice went through the notes that Theo had smuggled back from the past in the shaft of her boot. Theo had both of her long legs folded beneath her, and was using her telekinesis to spin the seat around and around, while her arms dangled at its sides.

“I could try it with an interpretive dance this time,” she added, eyes not moving from the crystal animals that she was making swirl through the air over her head.

Alice looked up and spit out the pen that she had been holding between her teeth. “Put those down,” she commanded, absently. Then, at the wicked glint in Theo’s eyes, she added, “ _carefully_.”

Theo smirked, but floated the glass horse and the glass rabbit gently down to the stacks of paper that they’d been guarding before she levitated them. The glass butterfly, however, she landed directly on top of the notebook that was open on the desk in front of Alice-- well, open on the two or three layers of books covering the desk in front of Alice. Alice picked it up in one hand and wondered if Theo had singled that ornament out intentionally, or if some connections just ran deeper than any conscious impulse. 

(That dubious eyebrow arching skyward, judging and giving all at once. _They were fresh out of unicorns_.)

Alice rubbed the delicate wing-- nearly as thin as the ones that the child she used to be had watched from a window, but much thicker than the ones that the niffin she used to be had created. She set it-- and the feelings it provoked-- to one side, carefully, before striking through a line of numbers in the notebook. She narrowed her eyes again, then raised her eyes to the book projected in the space above her desk (which was the kind of definite remote-access upgrade you got when you made a phosphormancer the head librarian, if Alice did say so herself), and resumed flicking hologram pages aside with short, sharp flicks of her hand.

Theo sighed out through her mouth, and spun herself around once more. 

Alice looked at her-- not quite guilty, but-- _cognizant_ . That every minute Alice spent going over the plan, the spells, the whole-- brash, audacious scheme, was a minute that Theo wasn’t getting them _back_. Fillory’s magic. And--

_And._

“You know that _you_ ’re the one who ran those numbers in the first place, right?” Theo tried again, quirking a small smile. “I was clear about that?” 

It brought Alice up short, realizing that Theo had actually _met_ the mixed-up mess that Alice used to be (or that Alice used to think she was, maybe), and still thought that the fact that _that_ girl had put the plan together was a vote of confidence. Alice curled her fingers into her palms, pausing her hunt through the projected pages. 

“I won’t be much longer,” she said. Then, looking down at the pages in front of her again, she said, “I know you want to-- I know how hard it’s been without him.”

“For you and Quentin, I mean,” she added quickly. “And your mom. And Margo.”

Alice hazarded another glance at Theo, who was looking at her strangely, like Alice was missing something obvious. “Yeah,” Theo said slowly, “ _of course_ you know.”

Alice picked up her pen and tapped it against the notebook, clearing her throat. “I just need to--”

“Double-check, I get it,” Theo finished for her, her confused expression fading into something softer. “Lucy’s the same way, you know.”

Alice’s brow furrowed. It was at odds with her vision of Lucy-- always confident, always certain of the path forward, so much like the person that Alice had been ( _Alice Knows Best_ , she could still hear Stephanie saying) before she had charged headlong into becoming something that made her question every step that led her there, and most of the ones that led away, too. 

Theo seemed to sense the dissonance Alice was experiencing and she snorted. “Trust me; the whole unshakable-confidence, rush-into-danger thing is an act. For her, anyway,” Theo amended, a sheepish look crossing her features. “I--” 

She paused to clear her throat. 

“I was actually ready to put this whole plan in place like a year and a half ago, but Lucy insisted that she needed to do more tinkering, more tests. I got-- _really_ pissed at her at a couple points, actually. Unfairly pissed, probably.”

Alice remembered, vaguely, Quentin worrying, Greg reporting campus gossip over dinner, around the time that Eliot was-- getting worse. Lucy’s occasional weekend appearances in Modesto had grown more thunderous than usual for a while. But it-- whatever _it_ was, exactly-- had all melted away the moment that Theo had stepped out of the carriage at Whitespire on that awful day, and all but collapsed onto her oldest and closest friend. 

“She wanted to keep you from doing something unproven,” Alice murmured, probably more a revelation to herself than to Theo. “That’s how-- that’s the way that she _cares_.” 

Theo didn’t say anything in response, but her eyes took on that faraway and tender look that her-- that _Eliot_ had worn so well, though Alice never would have told him so. Seeing it on his daughter, while said daughter was thinking about _Alice_ ’s daughter, made Alice almost feel like-- like she was intruding. Which was an odd thought to have about the two little girls whose shoes Alice used to tie, stopping them just for a second as they ran together into untold trouble. It almost made her wonder--

( _Do you really think they’re just_ friends? Eliot had asked once, a year or two before Lucy had started at Brakebills, his eyebrows at his hairline-- which hadn’t retreated at all with time, but only taken on a nice touch of silver that made him look even more unfairly dashing, even with the cane he’d had to start relying on again. Alice had frowned and turned to Quentin, who’d rolled his eyes and groaned.

_Not this again, El._

_I’m pretty sure Lucy’s seeing someone at college_ , Alice had added. _And isn’t Theo-- um, with the Lorian ambassador’s daughter?_

Eliot had flitted his hand, batting their objections aside. _That’s just sex_ , he’d said casually.

_Really didn’t need to think about that_ , Quentin said, with a grimace, as if they hadn’t all seen that it was at least _in part_ sex, when the broom closet door had swung open in the middle of Theo’s eighteenth birthday ball, igniting a near-diplomatic incident. _You know not everyone falls in love with their best friend, right?_

Eliot had fixed him with a look and said, _You of all people should know what it looks like when_ that _face_ does _fall in love with its best friend_.

The kiss Quentin had placed in Eliot’s palm then was mostly to hide his smile, but it lingered anyway. So had the smile itself, even after ( _especially after_ ) Eliot had flexed his fingers against Quentin’s cheek and said, _ugh, you’re so shaving that thing_.) 

“Anyway,” Alice said quickly, turning back to her notebook, “if she’s as careful as you say, she could have waited to actually get through the institutional review process before sending you back to 2019.”

The annoyance in Alice’s voice was mostly put on, although the gut-deep anger beneath it (and the even deeper terror beneath that) were real. The desk chair, which had been squeaking with each of Theo’s spins, came to an abrupt stop anyway. Alice looked up again, and when she did, the slight blush that Theo was trying hard not to acknowledge made still more pieces slot into place.

“In my defense-- ” Theo began, seemingly without much sense of what defense she would offer.

“Oh my God,” Alice said at the same time. “You-- she doesn’t know that you did the spell already. She was--”

_Waiting_ , Alice didn’t say. Lucy had been waiting-- or trying to make Theo wait, anyway-- for the review board’s clearance. The clearance that would have come through weeks ago if not for Alice’s meddling, Alice realized with an uncomfortable flush of her own.

Suddenly she and Lucy’s fight earlier that evening, and the ones they’d been having for months before that, were cast in a new light. Lucy’s desperation to get Alice’s signoff, her unwavering resolution, her barely contained frustration at Alice’s stonewalling. Alice had assumed it was all about Lucy’s intellectual pride-- and it certainly _was_ about that, partially. But it was _more_ than that, too. It was--

_How many more people have to pay_ , Lucy had asked, hurting and furious.

“To be fair,” Theo said after a moment, not quite able to meet Alice’s eyes, “she probably has a pretty good _guess_ that I was going to do the spell, anyway. I made my intentions-- fairly clear.” She tossed her head in a way that was so quintessentially her father, then opened her mouth and all but quoted her _other_ father, when she said, earnest and avid, “But it’s _Fillory_ . It will die without magic, and there’s less and less every day. I couldn’t just _wait_ \--”

“Oh my God,” Alice interrupted again, bringing one hand to her forehead, just above her glasses feeling an even deeper kinship with the daughter who was probably half-ready to kill Alice at this point. “You’re-- I honestly don’t know which of them you’re more like.”

Theo rose onto her knees, leaning forward perilously in the creaking chair. “I’m _all_ of them,” she said, eyes suddenly burning into Alice’s. “I’m the girl who grew up watching one of my dads try to sacrifice himself for the things he loved at the drop of a damn hat, and who watched the other try just as hard to protect him and the rest of us in-- _completely_ fucking high-handed ways.” She almost laughed, but she pressed on. “I’m also the girl that sat on Mom’s knee on the High King’s throne before I could _walk_ , and heard her tell me that I was a child of Fillory and a child of Earth and it was my job to protect _our kingdom_ and everyone in it.”

She rose all the way off the chair then, and came to stand across from Alice, on the opposite side of the now hopelessly cluttered desk. “ _That_ ’s what I am,” she said. “And _you_ \-- and Lucy?” 

She leaned forward and gripped the edge of the marble. 

“You’re the ones who _keep us safe_.” 

Alice could see them all, then, as clearly as if they were there. Saying _you’ll look after him, won’t you_ ? And _I have to ask you for something horrible._ And even _do I have your word that, if we allow your Order to build this portal, you will do everything in your power to ensure that it is never used to harm Fillory_?

And, softer than all the rest but also closer, _this is how you show you care_.

Alice flattened her own hands against her side of the desk, meeting Theo’s fiery eyes and all their ghosts. “Well, as the person who-- who’s supposed to keep you safe,” she said, “I want to go over all of this one more time, from the top, so that we _know_ it will work.” 

She paused then, as her eye caught the glistening glass butterfly beside the open notebook again. Her stomach sank, a little, the way it had when Theo first mentioned Hironomo and imbalances and all the things that Alice probably shouldn’t have ever learned but couldn’t actually regret knowing. The way it probably always _would_ , at least a little, at the reminder of what she was capable of. 

At the reminder of what she _wasn_ ’t capable of, too-- the things, the _people_ that _didn’t_ stay safe, when Alice tried to call the shots all by herself. Who shattered like so much glass, even as they rolled their eyes at Alice and told her it was fine and to stop feeling so guilty, while Alice could only sweep up as best she could for everyone else’s sake, because even after all this time, she couldn’t shake the feeling that the girl who let the glass fall shouldn’t get to cry over its pieces.

The niffin inside her scoffed, even as the mouse cringed, never really gone no matter how much time passed, but she kept herself steady, holding Theo’s gaze. 

“And I want to run this by the board before we go any farther,” she said, quiet but firm. “I don’t-- this shouldn’t just be _my_ decision.”

Alice thought that introducing more delay-- because it would take time, no question, to gather Fen for Fillory and Julia for Brakebills and Kady for the hedges, and to brief them all-- would upset Theo. But if anything, Theo’s fingers gripping the desktop unclenched at Alice’s pronouncement, and an easy smile spread over face. 

“You know,” she said warmly, “I thought you might say that. Fortunately, I’m about five steps ahead of you.”

She paused then, and tilted her head in a way that made Alice’s own chest unclench, the weight of the prospective decision ( _even though there was no decision, not really_ ) shaking loose, even before Theo hummed and amended, “Five steps-- or thirty years.”

  


_Midtown Manhattan, New York - July 2019_

“Well, this is some fucking Inception-level bullshit.” 

Margo-- or, the Hand of the High King of Fillory, as she was apparently styling herself now-- was sitting on the giant black couch in Kady’s penthouse apartment, the stiff scarlet train of her strapless tunic fanned out on the cushions beside her. She couldn’t seem to stop sneaking glances at the Eliot-doppelganger standing with crossed arms in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, whose bell sleeves were trailing almost to the carpet, even as she pretended to focus solely on Alice’s too-fast, hands-twisting presentation about said doppelganger and the time-travel paradox she’d created and the curse that Everett was going to cast on Eliot and the head-swimming way to-- _maybe_ \-- fix both of those problems at once.

“I’ll say,” Kady chimed in from the gold chair across the room, looking no less authoritative in her black jeans and blazer for being barefoot. 

Julia, who was sitting on the opposite end of the big couch from Margo in lotus position, kept looking back over her shoulder to the kitchen area, where Quentin stood defensively in the V that Eliot’s legs made as the latter perched on the island. 

Alice suspected that it wasn’t the mere fact of being back in this apartment that made Quentin want to stand sentry between Eliot’s body and their friends, although that was almost certainly a part of it.

When Alice had explained her-- plan? Theory? Hypothesis?-- to Quentin, Eliot, and Theo, even faster and with more hand wringing, in Eliot’s old room at the cottage, Quentin had practically been starting the opening tuts for Mayakovsky’s spell, before Alice had even finished speaking. She’d reacted on instinct, pulling the stained, profanity-laden notebook away from him and against her chest. The move surprised even herself, because _what was the point of_ doing _all this, of bringing it to Quentin, if she was only going to shy away at the last minute?_

But not as much as it surprised Quentin, whose gaze had gone black and baleful.

_Jesus Christ_ , he’d said, voice hard, head already shaking. _Are you seriously going to--_ again _with_ \--

_Q_ , Eliot had admonished, stopping the fervent tripping of Quentin’s words with just the touch of his fingertips on the inside of Quentin’s wrist. _She’s the one who brought the plan to_ us. He’d cut his eyes to Alice, holding her gaze with expectant hazel eyes and nodding, even as he continued to pitch his words to Q. _She clearly wants to help_.

So much of Alice had wanted to scoff at his unbelievable _arrogance_ , as he tried to-- _coax_ her to do what they wanted her to do. Like she was a hurt little bunny like Q that just needed to be held against Eliot’s heart until the shaking passed. _I’m not the bunny, I’m the thing that ripped it open_ , part of her had wanted to say. The niffin part. The part that was ready to spit in her own _face_ for being a nervous little bitch and not just getting down to business to _try it try it try it_ . The part that Alice couldn’t _trust_.

But she couldn’t trust the other part either, could she? The mouse that said _we can’t we can’t_ . Because that part had also said _destroy the keys_ and _don’t light the Binder’s candle,_ and _let him die_ \-- which was the same as _let_ them _die_ , really, because no matter how many promises Q made to keep living for Eliot, of course it would kill some piece of him to lose the person that finally, _finally_ loved him in the way he’d always been so desperate to be loved, wouldn’t it? Alice knew that better than anyone.

_Alice_ , Eliot had repeated. _You want to help. Don’t you_?

She had twisted her fingers into her skirt, her jaw jutting out, but not opening, as the _yes, I do, of course I do, why else have I been writing my fingers raw in the library for the last five hours_ that wanted so badly to crawl out of her chest got caught on all the thorns and snares on the way up. _You’re the closest thing I have to friends_ , she’d thought, _and I don’t want to let you die if I can fix it, and I don’t want to fix it if fixing it is worse than letting it stay broken,_ again _._

_I don’t know_ , she had finally managed to grit out. _I want to, obviously I want to, but I don’t-- I can’t-- I don’t know if it’s right to just--_ make _this choice, for_ everyone--

Q had looked away in disgust and frustration, then, while Eliot’s lips had pressed together. But Theo had just sighed, light and easy, tipping her head to one side. 

_I hate to short-circuit, like, a decade of personal development_ , she’d said, still wearing that look that would almost be _pitying_ , if not for the untroubled little smile that accompanied it, _but where I’m from, there’s already a solution to this oh-so-intractable problem_.

Julia had been the first of the future members of the Library’s future institutional review board ( _Alice_ ’s future institutional review board) that they’d found-- the Brakebills representative. ( _Well, technically, it’s Fogg_ , Theo had admitted, _but he’s even more checked-out of actually being dean in the future and it’s not like anyone_ doesn’t _know that Aunt Julia’s taking over the second he finally retires to Boca_ .) The four of them-- the Coldwater-Waughs and Alice-- had hurried across campus to Julia’s brand new faculty office. When they got there, Quentin, Eliot, and Theo had interrupted her evening meditation (which seemed to involve a surprising amount of athleisure wear for a semi-deity) to give her the condensed version of what was happening, while Alice had waited outside, uncertain of where she stood with Julia (after first costing Julia her goddesshood and then doing the spell for the Binder that allowed Julia to get back to _demi_ -goddesshood, at least), and unwilling to spend the time finding out while the clock continued to wind down. Instead, she’d paced idly in the hallway, reading the names of their old professors on the office doors, and lingering in front of one door, a few down from Julia’s, which was nameless and empty, waiting for a new occupant, apparently. She traced one short, dark fingernail against the empty square, where another professor’s name would go, someday-- unable, somehow, to imagine it.

Once Julia was on board, it only took a quick hit of Julia’s puppy-dog eyes to convince Penny-23 to pick up Fen from Fillory and bring her to Earth. He’d been intercepted by Margo, who had apparently declared (with a protectiveness that Alice would have found surprising if not for Theo’s spoilers about Fen and Margo’s future relationship) that no one would be _Anastasia-ing any more alleged daughters_ on the High King without Margo’s vetting, and (with an imperiousness that Alice didn’t find surprising at all) that she was _the one who makes the goddamned decisions around here anyway_. From there, Penny had taken the whole group to Kady’s apartment, after Kady, in a blatant power move that Alice couldn’t wholly disapprove of even given the ticking clock, said that if they wanted her time they’d have to come to her.

“Maybe if we go over Alice’s proposal again from the top?” Julia suggested, still looking over her shoulder at Quentin, the mildness of her tone probably for his benefit, rather than for Alice’s. “The gist is for Alice to swap consciousness with her future self, right?”

“Using Fucker-ovsky’s spell?” Margo added.

Alice nodded to both of them. “Theo says that-- that I’m the only one who was there, or-- who will be there, I guess? Who’s-- who’s with Eliot, anyway, when he . . . “

“ _Dies_ ,” Quentin finished for her, “ _alone_.” His flat tone made Julia mirror his own flinch on the last word, and Eliot settle a hand against the side of his neck, thumb rubbing the knob at the top of his spine, where his hair didn’t quite reach anymore.

Theo, still in the window, blinked once, but didn’t allow herself any other reaction.

“Well, fuck that right in its fucking ear,” Margo said, the taffeta of her train rustling as she drew herself up. She met Eliot’s always-fond gaze briefly, then fixed her sights on Alice. “You think that you can change it?”

Alice bit her lip. “It wouldn’t be _changing_ anything, technically. That’s the whole point. Mayakovksy’s spell lets you swap consciousness with a past or future version of yourself. I could swap consciousness with the version of me who was-- who is-- at Eliot’s bedside. Waiting. Her consciousness would travel back here, into my body. If you wipe her memories and put a patch over the blank spot--”

“-- then she’d only _think_ she saw Eliot die,” Julia said, gaze drifting into the middle distance, just for a moment. “When actually she’d be here with us, while you’re in the future _saving_ Eliot.”

“Exactly,” Alice said. “Once we swap back, she’ll-- _I’ll_ still tell everyone that Eliot died, just like Theo and everyone else remember it happening. And none of us will realize it’s not true, because we’ll forget about-- _all_ of this, once Theo leaves. Until Theo casts the other half of the spell on our future selves.”

“And that’s why we wouldn’t actually be creating a paradox if we save him,” Julia concluded. “Because we wouldn’t be changing something that _actually_ happened, just-- something that people are under a misimpression actually happened.”

“A misimpression that only exists because we changed the future in the first place,” Kady said, skeptical.

“No,” Julia said. “Not _changed_. If we do this-- if we get it right, then Eliot dying will never have happened, period. It will always have been a misunderstanding. But if we don’t, then it will always have been true.” 

She turned to Alice, then, eyes alight with a interest in a way that reminded Alice that magic had never been just a tool to Julia, the way it felt to Alice, most of the time. It was an endless puzzle, and one that didn’t necessarily need ruthless solving, so much as exploring. “It’s kind of like Schrodinger’s cat, isn’t it?” she asked, looking at Alice the way she occasionally had before Alice had turned on them all.

Alice could only nod.

Julia smiled. “Right. So, either way, whatever we choose, we wouldn’t really be changing the future, we’d just be setting it. And making everyone’s memories and what actually happened--”

“Harmonize,” Theo offered, letting her head fall back against the windowpane.

“God, I need a drink,” Kady said, rubbing the bridge of her nose with two fingers.

“Whatever you wanna call it,” Margo said, resolve seeming to grow at the immensely familiar line of Theo’s profile as she leaned against the glass, “if it ends up with Eliot not dead, then let’s get the fuck on with it. Fillory votes yes.” 

Kady snorted, bringing one hand up to rake through her curls. “You’re not even gonna run it by the _actual_ high king?”

Margo bristled, perfect brows rising and doe eyes going wide. “Excuse you? I’m the actual _Hand_ of the High King,” she said, puffing her chest out. “You’re a glorified union rep. I wrote a goddamn _constitution_ saying that I get to _speak_ for Fen.”

“That’s not all you’re gonna get to do for Fen, apparently,” Kady muttered. None of them had time to process the fact that Margo almost-- actually-- possibly-- _blushed_ at that, because Quentin heaved a plainly annoyed sigh.

Eliot drew his long arms around Quentin’s middle, pulling Quentin further back against him. Alice couldn’t help but notice that Quentin’s shoulders dropped a little bit at the manhandling, even as his arms stayed tightly crossed. 

“Got something to say, Coldwater?” Kady asked, her strong eyebrows rising.

Quentin opened his mouth for a no-doubt biting retort, but he cut himself off when Eliot’s hands stroked insistently down his sides. He shook his head instead, letting out a patronizing chuckle as he did-- the one that he saved for when he was convinced that the people around him were being unforgivably callous to one of the various things that meant the world to him.

“Oh, nothing,” he said, uncrossing his arms in order to wave one hand. “I just-- I’m _really_ excited for another group debate on whether Eliot’s _life_ is acceptable collateral damage.”

Eliot sighed, bringing his forehead to Quentin’s shoulder.

“Oh, good-- _this_ fight again,” Kady said, rolling her eyes. 

“My thoughts exactly,” Quentin shot back, eyes flashing.

Part of Alice sympathized with Kady, especially as she watched Quentin jut his jaw in that infuriatingly stubborn way. But part of her kept thinking about Eliot’s _I know how it looks, when your depression gets bad_ , and the way that, in retrospect, it hadn’t _only_ been pig-headedness that had made Quentin so apathetic to everything but Eliot that day in the dog park. 

And _another_ part of Alice-- another part was also remembering Eliot’s impossible insistence that he’d monitored Q’s ups and downs _for fifty years, remember?_ , and his whispered allusions to an unknown boy who’d somehow inherited Quentin’s taste in women and had always wanted a little sister. And she wondered if she could have faulted her Grandma Quinn if Grandma had declared herself _Team Grandpa_ after fifty-six years of marriage.

“ _Baby_ ,” Eliot admonished. Quentin pulled out of his arms, but he didn’t go far, turning around to face him. He was close enough for Eliot to reach out and grip his collar bone with one hand, letting his other hand rest on Quentin’s chest. 

It used to _annoy_ Alice, the way that Eliot was always pulling Quentin in with those long limbs, like some kind of sea monster capturing its prey. Even at Brakebills South, it had-- But it was hard, Alice was realizing, to maintain an irritation that was based mostly on feeling poor by comparison, once you realized that there _was_ no comparison, not really. And that there never had been.

“Maybe we should just let them talk, hm?” Eliot was asking, smoothing two fingers across Quentin’s sternum.

“You mean let them _vote_ on whether you live or die?” Quentin asked, still not pulling away from Eliot’s touch, in spite of his pissy tone. “I know you said no playing the hero, but are you seriously telling me that you’d be fine to just-- sit back and _watch_ if the roles were reversed?”

Quentin’s challenge made Alice think of the space between the man who’d knelt at Quentin’s feet and begged him not to go on a dangerous solo machine to fight an entity with power he couldn’t match, and the man who’d crept in secret through the corridors of Blackspire, with a gun and a single god-killing bullet.

Eliot’s thoughts seemed to go somewhere similar, judging by the way he set his mouth into a strained smile. “Well, do as I say not as I do, yes?” he intoned, dripping practiced charm and deflection.

Before Quentin could answer, Eliot was jumping down off the counter and reaching one hand down to circle Quentin’s wrist. “Okay, let’s go,” he said, pulling Q toward the sliding glass door that led to Kady’s balcony. “Smoke break,” he called over his shoulder to the group. “Carry on.”

Once he’d tugged Quentin through the doorway, he stopped to smile reassuringly at Theo, before sliding the glass shut behind them. Alice watched through the glass as he turned to face Quentin, who was gesturing back toward the apartment and saying something Alice couldn’t make out, looking angry and stubborn against the city lights, even though he couldn’t quite hide the way his eyes were always at their softest when he was looking at Eliot. Alice knew that if it had been her and Quentin out on that balcony, back when they’d been together, this would have been the moment that she returned whatever fire he’d just delivered, trading volleys back and forth until the confrontation ended with her seething and Quentin scrubbing his hands over his face. But Eliot stepped into Quentin’s space without hesitation, speaking slowly and deliberately, then wrapped both hands around the back of Quentin’s neck and pulled him in for a kiss that melted the remaining tension out of Quentin’s shoulders.

“He takes really good care of him,” Julia murmured to no one in particular. 

It made Alice jump at first, guilty to have been caught watching, until she noticed that _everyone_ in the apartment was looking through the glass at the two figures that were holding each other close-- 

Including Theo, who was staring wistfully, those hazel eyes looking lost and endless.

Alice’s hard heart cracked at the sudden emergence of Theo’s raw sadness-- not only for the sorrow’s own sake, but because of how _careful_ Theo was being to hide it away whenever her parents might see it: a mirror to Eliot in _so_ many ways. It made Alice wonder, as she remembered how reluctant Theo had been to even _mention_ Eliot to Alice, how many times Theo had actually let her grief show in the year and a half since Eliot had-- since she _thought_ that Eliot had died. 

(It also made Alice wonder, just for a moment, if-- if _Lucy and Charlie_ would ever look at Alice that way-- at _Alice and Greg_ , that way, if they were in Theo’s shoes. But it felt impossible, as she watched Eliot pull Quentin into his chest and scratch through the mousy hair, that _she_ could ever give anyone something that would be worth missing so deeply.)

“We should, um--” Alice said to Kady, Margo, and Julia, with an awkward gesture toward the stricken Theo. 

Kady took the suggestion, leaning forward, resting both elbows on her knees, down to business again. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s say I buy the part of the plan where Future-Alice’s memory of Eliot dying is a fake. What about--”

She glanced over to Theo, who was still staring through the glass.

“-- the body?” she finished in an undertone. “Wasn’t there a funeral or something?”

“Fillorian mourning rites are extensive, but they’re closed-casket,” Theo answered, making Alice jump again. Theo turned to face her assembled-- _aunts_ , Alice realized, with another twinge in her chest. 

“It’s okay,” Theo said, taking in their guilty expressions with a half-smile.“He was-- the casket was already sealed by the time we got back to the castle,” she said evenly, trying to show them all how okay she was. “Aunt-- uh, Alice just needs to make sure that there’s something in the box and that the box is closed by the time the consciousness-swap is up.”

“Okay. Well, how is _Aunt Alice_ going to do that?” Kady asked.

“Phosophoromancer,” Alice reminded her with a shrug, that old Brakebills impulse to hide what she was capable of, coming back in force. 

But Kady’s expression went-- impressed, if anything.

“I can get a guard to help me put a blanket or a pillow or something in the casket,” Alice went on. “I just need to cloak it so that it looks like-- like it’s--” _Eliot_ , she couldn’t say. “I can use DeBruegger to change the specific gravity so it’s heavy enough.”

“It won’t take much,” Theo said, almost apologetically, turning back to the glass, her voice beginning to wobble. “He-- hm. He was pretty weak by the end.”

Alice was grateful for Kady piping up again, then.

“There’s still the part where future-Eliot actually _is_ dying,” Kady said. “How is Alice swapping places with her future self going to fix that? You said the curse Everett hits him with is incurable.”

“It’s irreversible,” Alice corrected.

“What’s the difference?” Kady asked, eyes narrowing.

“It means we can’t counteract it,” Alice explained. “But, based on everything I’ve read, Chatwin’s Torrent could cure it. It’s just that Chatwin’s Torrent--”

“-- dried up when Zelda tried to drain the secret sea,” Julia said, her brow wrinkling. “So when you swap with your future self,” she said, “you can send Eliot back to some time before the torrent dried up.”

“Have you thought about how?” Julia asked, after Alice nodded her assent.

“I think we have to use the same spell that brought Theo here,” she admitted, nose wrinkling. It was the weakest point in the plan, without question. Theo’s horomancer friend had designed her spell so that however much time a traveller spent in the past, that same amount of time would have passed in their own timeline, by the time they snapped back. According to Theo, more than sixteen months had passed between Eliot’s supposed death and her present. That meant that wherever they sent Eliot, they’d need to stash him there for just as long. Even assuming that the spell could scale up that far without introducing complications (which Alice thought it probably could; the equations Theo had shown her were crisp and immaculate), sixteen months was a long time for Eliot to spend in the past, when every minute was an opportunity to stumble across people that they’d then need to find and cast the second half of the spell on in the future.

Julia frowned, seeming to see the same problems that Alice did. 

Margo, who’d been silent since Eliot and Quentin had left, staring at the balcony with the same intensity as Theo, heaved a sudden, frustrated sigh. “Whatever, so we work it out in post,” she said, the note of anger that usually accompanied her strongest emotions seeping into her voice. 

When no one answered for a moment, she leaned forward, eyes hard. “ _It’s our family_ ,” she said, tipping her chin not only toward the pair on the balcony, but to Theo, also. 

The words hit Alice as hard as _Aunt Alice_ had, as hard as _Lucy and Charlie_ , even though she wasn’t sure if Margo had actually intended to include Alice in that circle.

Julia nodded at Margo’s words, sitting up taller. “Margo’s right. I vote yes. Future Brakebills is in.” 

Kady looked between the two of them consideringly, then sighed. “Screw it,” she said. “We’ve got three hours and no other options; we’ve come up with worse plans under better conditions. And anyway, it _would_ be good to see someone actually save the person they love after the Library fucks them over.”

“So the hedges are in?” Julia prompted.

“We’re in if the New Order is,” she allowed.

Four pairs of eyes turned to Alice, then. The uncertainty that had gripped her in Eliot’s old room began to rise up out of her gut, again. Except--

Except that it wasn’t just _Alice_ deciding, this time-- not really. The thought made both the mouse and the niffin voices inside her quieter, even as her stomach churned at the idea of actually _relying_ on other people, sharing the burden, something she hadn’t truly done since--

( _don’t you-- forget about me_ )

\-- well, in a long time. 

Alice swallowed and let her gaze slip past the eyes watching her, _waiting_ for her, back to the balcony, where Quentin and Eliot were now standing shoulder to shoulder against the railing, Quentin smoking a cigarette, Eliot running a hand up and down his back, nodding as Quentin probably ranted.

Eliot looked back over his shoulder, toward the apartment. Maybe he was checking to see if they were wrapping up. Maybe it was inadvertent. Whatever the reason, he caught eyes with Alice. 

And smiled.

_Don’t expect me to help you_ , Alice wanted to warn him. _I’m not you._ _I can’t-- I don’t know how to_ love _like that_. 

But Eliot’s gaze didn’t waver. And unlike the other eyes on Alice, his didn’t look like they were waiting. They looked like they already _knew_ . _Come on_ , they were saying, _help me help him. Don’t you--_

( _\-- forget about--_ )

_\--want to?_

And Alice--

Nodded.

  


_Library Main Branch, The Neitherlands - July 2047_

“So Brakebills, Fillory, and the hedges all voted yes,” Alice confirmed, as Theo finished recounting the story.

“Mm hm,” Theo nodded, leaning more heavily against the marble desk.

_She’s been going nonstop for more than twenty-four hours at this point_ , Alice realized, as Theo rubbed her eyes roughly with the inside of her wrist. But Alice pressed forward with the mission, anyway.

“And you’ve already gone to Julia and Margo and Kady and cast the second half of the spell on them?” she confirmed.

Theo nodded. Again. “Why do you think I look like I’ve been running literally across planets?” she said, gesturing toward her disheveled hair and rumpled blouse. “The only people left are you and-- and my dads.”

Alice frowned at that. “You haven’t gone to Quentin, yet?”

Theo looked down at the crowded desk guiltily. “I-- um. I didn’t want to get his hopes up. In case.”

Alice let out a breath, well aware, from the way that Theo was refusing to meet Alice’s eyes, that Quentin wasn’t the only one whose hopes would be crushed if the pieces of this plan that Alice’s past self had devised didn’t line up exactly right. 

“So what do we have left to do?” Alice asked, setting those insecurities to one side, the same way she’d set aside the glass butterfly.

“Just two things,” Theo said, clearing her throat-- because Alice wasn’t the only born and bred compartmentalizer in this office, after all. Sometimes, Alice thought-- 

Sometimes she thought it was-- it was the main thing she and Eliot had had in common, aside from Quentin and their daughters, anyway. Their need to step into a persona that didn’t care-- that didn’t have _time_ to care, in Alice’s case, or just didn’t _care_ to care, in Eliot’s (and in his daughter’s)-- in order to be at all useful to the people that needed them.

Not that Alice’s efforts at usefulness had always been particularly effective, where Eliot was concerned, Alice reminded herself sharply.

“What are the two things?” Alice made herself ask Theo, shaking her head at the feelings that were growing increasingly intrusive. It was late, she reminded herself. And Theo wasn’t the only one who was running on fumes; Alice had long missed spaghetti night.

“Well, first someone has to balance fucking Zelda’s draining spell,” Theo said. She paused to lick her lips. “And then. Someone just has to-- has to call back Dad.”

It wasn’t a shock, obviously. It was-- it was the whole point of this endeavor. But something about hearing Theo say the words made them feel like more than a theory-- made them feel _possible_. Like Theo just had to-- pick up a phone and tell him to come back, it had been long enough, and they were waiting for him. 

Alice’s heart gave an embarrassing stutter at the sudden _reality_ of the idea. That in an hour or two, that he-- that _Eliot_ \-- that her--

( _don’t you-- forget about me_ )

She shook her head harshly; this was about Theo, and about Quentin-- _God,_ Quentin. It wasn’t about _her_ , the girl who had dropped the glass and let it shatter.

Theo noticed and tipped her head to one side.

“Aunt Alice,” she sighed once again, and Alice’s fingers clenched at how much it sounded, how much it _felt_ , like that lost _Quinn_.

“You’re allowed to miss him, too, you know,” Theo said, making Alice wonder if maybe she had picked up Alice-specific telepathy from Lucy. Or if maybe Theo had developed Lucy-specific telepathy of her own, which was generally applicable to the other overreaching, under-emoting women in the Quinn family. Maybe it would even work on Stephanie, Alice thought with what she could recognize was a touch of hysteria.

“I know you always say that dad-- that Quentin, I mean, is your best friend, other than Uncle Greg,” Theo was saying. “But I know that-- that _he_ meant a lot to you, too.”

In _that I’m-telling-Mom_ _way_ , Theo had said once. 

Alice looked back at the glass butterfly still resting on the desk, remembering how Theo had made it spin above the desk chair. She remembered someone else making it float through the air, too-- through the office door, doing a showy and unnecessary loop-de-loop before it landed on Alice’s desk for the very first time, almost two decades ago. 

( _They were fresh out of unicorns_ , he’d said, deadpan, appearing in the doorframe moments after the glass trinket had landed. He had stopped needing the cane a week or two before, but kept carrying it for _the drama factor_. He gave it a single, Broadway-style spin, as he lingered in the threshold.

_He’s very sorry for being an ass to you about the whole summoning-Zelda’s-niffin plan_ , he’d finally said, still looking down at the cane. _He’ll tell you himself once he’s stopped sulking._

He’d looked up then, and the depth of gratitude in his hazel eyes had made Alice feel unworthy, when all she’d done was lecture Quentin and play the hardass, like she usually did.

_Thank you_ , he’d said, voice wet, _for stopping him_.

Alice had looked down at the glass ornament, to avoid his eyes. It had been the first time in years that she’d seen a butterfly and thought _first_ of the view from Daniel’s office window, and an older child’s hand in her pudgy toddler fist, and only _second_ of lead wings screaming.)

Alice cleared her throat, ready to change the subject, but Theo reached her hand across the desk and covered Alice’s. Her hands were far too delicate to look like Eliot’s-- they were much more Fen. But the _feeling_ somehow, was the same.

“He loved you, too, you know,” Theo said, unsparingly-- like it was a slap and not a kindness, like she knew that some not-insignificant part of Alice would always respond to the offer of complete acceptance that way, no matter how many times Greg whispered it against her ear as they fell asleep, or Lucy grudgingly repeated it before stepping into the portal back to school, or Charlie’s now-ancient crayon drawing shouted it from the same old Maytag refrigerator that had been in the house in Modesto since Sheila’s mom had bought it, held together by Quentin’s increasingly creative mending spells. 

Alice pursed her lips against the tide of emotion and made herself think of broken glass.

“He’d want you to stop blaming yourself,” Theo was saying, “just like he wanted Dad to stop blaming himself.”

It was true, of course. At any given moment, Eliot would always want the people he-- he cared about to be less torn up inside, especially when they were torn up over him. And it was nothing Alice hadn’t heard before-- from Greg, certainly, so many times. From Fen, too, with red-rimmed eyes at the funeral that Alice had spent watching Quentin like a hawk-- from a distance. Even from Kady a few times, when they went for beers (or for appletinis, in Alice’s case), after Order-Hedge Council meetings. But, still--

“I don’t really know how to do that,” Alice admitted, meeting Theo’s eyes ( _Eliot_ ’s eyes) as evenly as she could, even though she knew her own were probably red and beginning to well up behind the protective barrier of her glasses.

Theo just sighed and held onto Alice’s hand more tightly. “Maybe,” she started, then stopped herself. “Maybe, you just need to trust him on it,” she finished. 

Before Alice could say something in response, something to undercut or complicate Theo’s devastatingly simple counsel, Theo pulled her hand away and twisted her hands into a short series of tuts.

_Metamorphosis_ , Alice recognized. Not Hironomo’s spell. Just a simple metal-unmasking.

When Theo finished, she curled her fingers in the beckoning gesture that usually accompanied her casual displays of telekinesis. The moment she did, the papers on the desk began to stir and then give way as an object buried beneath them levitated off the desk’s surface.

Alice saw the broken gold chain first, as it slipped out in the space between two open books. But dangling between the snapped ends wasn’t the delicate pendant Alice remembered wearing every day for the past twenty-odd years, but something bigger, heavier. Something made of brass and effort and _the beauty of all life_. 

Something Alice thought she’d never, ever see again.

She looked to Theo, wide-eyed and confused. But Theo only smiled, letting the-- the _key_ fall into Alice’s hand, the triangle carved into its bow pressing cool and smooth against Alice’s palm.

“Maybe you should trust him,” she repeated. “Because he _definitely_ trusted you.”

  


_Midtown Manhattan, New York - July 2019_

Alice checked her watch as she knelt in the circle that Kady and Julia had chalked onto the floor of an empty bedroom in Kady’s penthouse.

( _You have a casting clean room?_ Julia had asked, teasing but impressed after Kady had balked at moving aside the heavy sofa and thick area rugs in the palatial front room to make the space they’d need to set up Mayakovsky’s complicated spell. Kady’s cocky smirk had been all the answer required.)

Julia was location unknown, at the moment, having pulled Quentin away to run a mysterious errand a little while ago. Her _nothing dangerous-- I promise_ , had been the only thing that kept Eliot from chaining Quentin down to keep him in the apartment. Even still, the last time Alice had seen Eliot, he’d been on the couch in the front room, gently tying Theo’s hair back with one of the elastics he’d pulled from Quentin’s wrist earlier ( _like Quentin’s body was just an extension of his own_ ), pretending that he wasn’t staring at the apartment door, while Theo played with Kady’s puppy and they both put on a good show of acting like Theo was _only_ talking about the dog as she murmured quietly about _how young and handsome you are_ and _never thought I’d see you again, buddy_.

“Okay,” Margo said, casting an appraising eye over the markings and the objects scattered around the room one more time. “I think we’re ready to roll on _From Russia, With Batshit_ ’s schematics. You good on the spell to scramble Future-Alice’s memories?”

Kady nodded, setting a hot pink lighter down beside the little dish holding a scroll, and cracking her fingers. “Ready.”

Margo breathed out through her nose, then turned to face Alice. “Okay. So here’s the deal. You’re only gonna have an hour and a half in your future self’s nun shoes before the spell brings you back here. Tell me again what you’re going to do in that time.”

Alice felt a sigh of irritation rising, the way it almost always did when she and Margo were working in close quarters, ever since the day Margo had flicked her hair back and called her _Kitty Cat_ like they were friends. But it was hard _not_ to notice the worried lines carved around Margo’s garnet-red mouth and the tense set of her forehead. So Alice swallowed down the annoyance, and the reminder that _this whole thing was_ my idea, and just answered the question.

“I have to tell Future-Eliot what’s happening, cast Theo’s spell to send him back--”

“How far back?” Margo interrupted.

“Thirty-five years,” Alice answered dutifully, not even rolling her eyes. “Long enough ago that the torrent is still flowing, but close enough in time that anyone Eliot accidentally runs into in the past might still be alive to cast the second half of the spell on in the present. I tell him to lay low, and that the spell will bring him back in sixteen months. And then I--”

“Play reverse _Weekend at Bernie_ ’s with the palace guards to make sure they close up the casket,” Margo finished. She said it like she was bored with Alice’s description, but Alice suspected the interruption was mostly to make sure no one actually used the words _Eliot_ and _corpse_ in the same sentence. 

Alice’s suspicions were confirmed when Margo leaned in and narrowed her eyes at Alice. “Listen, you’re the one who got that baby-monster fucker out of his body at Brakebills South, and I won’t ever forget that,” she said. “But I also haven’t forgotten what you did to all of us on the key quest. If you decide to go _Alice Knows Best_ on this one . . .”

Alice pressed her lips together at Margo’s continuing ability to casually tap into Alice’s deepest insecurities, but she kept her chin lifted and her gaze steady. “I won’t,” she said. 

Margo held her gaze for a moment, then nodded. “Well, all right then.” She turned to Kady. “Let’s hit it.”

Kady raised her hands to begin the spell, but she was interrupted by the stampeding of feet, then Julia throwing open the bedroom door, Quentin and Penny at her elbows. Eliot and Theo followed behind, and-- from the sound of it-- the puppy followed behind that. 

“Don’t use Theo’s spell to send Eliot back into the past,” Julia gasped out, her face flushed like she’d been running. “There are too many variables--”

“J, we know that, but we don’t have a better plan for how to get him back to Chatwin’s Torrent,” Kady interrupted. 

Julia’s mouth curled into a smile and she turned to Quentin. “We do now.” 

“Show them,” she said to Quentin, at the same time that Eliot elbowed his way to the front of the small crowd in the doorway. 

Quentin lifted his closed fists, and opened them to reveal--

“ _Oh my God_ ,” Eliot breathed beside him. “Is that--”

Quentin met his eyes and an indescribable look passed between the two. “Yeah,” he said, the corner of his mouth lifting. “The time key.”

Alice, still kneeling in the chalk circle, stared at the brass key like it was a ghost come back to haunt her. “But I--” she started.

“Yeah, you did,” Julia answered, staring at her gravely. With that look on Julia’s face, Alice could still see it so clearly-- Julia wrenching the golden energy out of her own body to fix what Alice had taken upon herself to break. 

“But as it turns out,” Julia continued, her face softening, “when you betrayed us all at Blackspire-- because that’s absolutely what you did-- you _actually_ destroyed six magical keys and one spare key to Ted Coldwater’s house, which was dummied up to _look_ like the time key.”

“How is that possible?” It was Eliot who asked, because Alice wasn’t quite able to say anything yet, as she tried to decide whether it was a weight being placed on her or being lifted off, to learn that the worst thing she had done to her-- to her friends was only six-sevenths as bad as she had believed (had _intended_ ) it to be.

“It’s _possible_ because we have a consciousness-swap spell and a magician who’s okay at illusion spells and _really damn good_ at sleight of hand,” Julia said with a smile. 

Eliot turned to Quentin, who ducked his head. “While you guys were setting things up here, Julia and Penny took me to Brakebills and we did Mayakovsky’s spell. I went back to before we all went to Blackspire, and switched out the real time key for one off my key ring.”

Eliot frowned. “Wouldn’t that change--”

“What we remember happening?” Julia interjected. “Nope.” She cut her eyes slyly to Alice and added, “ _Someone_ destroyed the key that we brought with us to Blackspire before we could put it in the fountain and find out if it was a fake or not.”

Alice’s heart clenched painfully. “How did the real key end up here?” she asked, instead of thinking about Julia’s words.

Quentin answered. “After I made the switch, I hid the real thing somewhere that I knew no one would find it until we needed it now.”

“Where?” Eliot asked, his eyes huge and liquid, looking at Quentin that way he did, that said that Quentin was the most impossible, incredible thing in all of existence.

Quentin smirked, even though his eyes were locked just as devotedly onto Eliot’s. “I put it inside one of your textbooks,” he said, deadpan, his face all affection. 

Eliot made a little broken humming noise at that, and a wave of worry passed over Quentin’s face. 

“I know I promised no heroics,” he said, looking up at Eliot from beneath drawn-together brows. “And I know I’ve been-- I wasn’t taking good care of myself for a while, there. But this is-- regardless of-- I am-- El, I am _always_ going to want to save you,” he said, nearly going hoarse with how much he _meant_ it. Alice could _hear_ it, in every syllable, that exceptional earnestness. And for once, the comparisons to the times that he’d sounded the same way with her, or that he hadn’t, just-- didn’t come. Because this was, simply, the way that Quentin loved _Eliot_. And nothing else really mattered.

“That’s not _just_ me being reckless,” Quentin went on. “So. So, this was something that-- that I _could_ do, for you, without putting myself in harm’s way. So if you’re mad that--”

“ _Shut up_ ,” Eliot said, reaching forward and grabbing Quentin’s shirt with both fists. “Oh my God, just shut up and come here,” he repeated, hauling Quentin in, and pressing his forehead against his lover’s. “You are _always_ my hero. That’s-- Jesus, Q. That’s the whole _point_.”

It was Margo that drew up the strength to intrude on the moment first, clearing her throat. “Okay, lovebirds,” she said, in an approximation of her usual stern tone, “there’ll be time for that later. _Lots_ of time if we get this right. For _now_ \--”

She squared her shoulders and turned to Julia. “What’s Alice supposed to do with the tchotchke?”

Julia took the key gently from Quentin and knelt down in front of Alice. “This key is connected to the timeline that created it.”

Alice frowned, confused. “What timeline is that?”

Julia looked back over her shoulder like she was asking for permission, then turned back to Alice and said delicately, like she was selecting her words with care, “The timeline where Q and Eliot-- where the time they spent at the mosaic together called it forth.” 

Alice shook her head, her brow still furrowed. “But-- that happened in this timeline.” 

Even as she said it, though, she thought about _fifty years_ , _fifty years, fifty years_ , repeated over and over again. Of the impossible but somehow also obvious answer to the question that had dogged her for months, of how Quentin and Eliot had gone overnight from an illicit hookup to soulmates.

_Because it_ wasn’t _overnight._

“It’s-- a branch of this timeline,” Julia said gently. “Q and Eliot remember it, but it’s-- distinct. The details aren’t important right now. What matters is that this key can take a person back to the timeline where it was created. And since that timeline is separated from this one, sending Eliot there won’t create any ripples.”

“How do you know all this?” Alice asked.

Julia shrugged and dimpled. “Extra-human artifacts are kinda my thing now.”

_A demigoddess who studies puzzles for puzzles’ sake_ , Alice thought. And a sleight-of-hand artist, and a time traveller, and a boss witch with a clean room, and the Hand of the High King, and a _traveller_ -traveller, and the man who wouldn’t let Quentin take the easy way out. 

And Alice. The key destroyer.

All the little pieces that had needed to come together exactly right to make this plan possible, to make something so much better than Alice and her mouse and her niffin could have come up with on their own. 

She nodded at Julia, accepting her place as one point in this strange constellation. “So what do I need to do to use the key?” 

“Easy,” Julia said. “You just have to put the key in the clock, and Eliot will be able to walk right through to the other timeline. When we’re ready to bring him back, in Theo’s future, someone just needs to insert the key and he’ll be able to walk right back.”

“What clock?” Alice asked.

“The rams’ head clock that’ll be in Quentin and Eliot’s bedroom,” she answered, with a touch of mischief in her gaze.

“But we closed that portal,” Margo said, at the same time that Quentin said, “Wait-- that’s-- the clock is at Brakebills. How do you know--”

Julia answered Margo, first. “It doesn’t work as a portal into Fillory anymore, but it will always answer the call of the time key.” Then she turned to Quentin, her smirk widening. “And it may be at Brakebills now, but I happen to know that _someone_ ’s boyfriend promised _my_ boyfriend a legitimately obscene quantity of Hoberman’s baked goods in exchange for help travelling the clock to Whitespire. _For sentimental value_ \--”

Quentin looked up at Eliot then, who carefully avoided his gaze, but drew his arm tighter around Quentin’s waist all the same. 

“--so I’m thinking it won’t be far from Future-Eliot’s bedside,” Julia concluded.

“It’s not,” Theo confirmed, voice mistier than she was pretending it was. “It’s-- it’s been in their room for as long as I can remember.”

Eliot held his free arm out to Theo at that, drawing her to his other side, squeezing the two people that he would come to love most in the world ( _in this timeline, anyway_ ) against him.

“So how do I get the key?” Alice asked. “Are you going to hide it somewhere in the room, like Quentin did at Brakebills?”

Kady, who’d been quiet up to that point, looked down at the sleek black watch on her wrist and frowned. “We’re already down to a little over an hour for Mayakovsky’s spell, to finish up and still have time to get everyone home before Theo goes back. Travelling to Fillory to hide the key first is pushing it.”

Alice considered the options. She was toying at the edges of an idea when Margo spoke up.

“You’ve got that crazy-evil-genius look in your eye again, blondie,” she said. “Spill.”

Alice pushed down the instinct to hedge or to hesitate, and met her-- her future review board’s eyes. “Well, it’s just that-- the key doesn’t actually need to arrive in Fillory before we cast the spell in 2019, does it? Just before I-- before my future self is there with Eliot in 2046.”

“So?” Margo prompted.

“So. What if I do a locating spell to find where it’s hidden once I get to 2046, and then when I get back here, I’ll tell you where it was, and someone can drop it in place on the way home?”

She bit her lip as the board processed the suggestion. It was circular, she knew that. And fairly-- audacious. But in _theory_ , at least--

“ _Damn_ ,” Margo muttered. “That is--”

“Twisty,” Kady added.

“ _I love it_ ,” Julia finished. 

Alice met all three approving smiles with a shy one of her own. But the moment only _lasted_ for a moment, before Julia gulped a big breath and said, “Okay, people. Show time. Anyone who’s not doing the spell, out. Alice, real quick-- let me show you the spell to steer the clock portal so that it drops Future-Eliot right at Chatwin’s Torrent.”

Alice nodded and prepared to focus on Julia’s hands, but got distracted by the feeling of eyes on her. She looked up and there in the doorway was Quentin, standing in place with a scared expression on his face, even as Eliot and Theo tried to lead him out of the room with Penny and the puppy. 

Alice met his gaze and tried to convey that she _knew_ , and she _understood_ , that he was trusting her with-- with _fifty years_ of his heart. She wanted to try to say that she was going to stick to the plan this time, and that when she held the key in her hand this time, she would-- she would _realize_ and _respect_ what had gone into it.

She couldn’t tell if Quentin understood any of what she wanted to convey or not; his face stayed tense and worried. But Eliot, still at Quentin’s side, rubbed a hand over Quentin’s hip, as he pulled Quentin carefully toward the hallway. 

“Come on, Q,” he said, with one glance back to Alice. “She’s got this.”

  


_Library Main Branch, The Neitherlands - July 2047_

Alice traced one finger carefully over the triangle at the top of the brass key that Theo had placed in her hand. 

“Oh my God,” she said, for maybe the third or fourth time. 

When she looked up at Theo, there were tears in those impossible eyes, like the whole thing was finally becoming real to _her_ , too. 

“We just have to bring the key to the old rams’ head clock,” Theo said, sounding like she couldn’t quite believe it-- or like she couldn’t quite _let_ herself believe it. “It’s a time portal, apparently,” she continued. “Something about Dad and Dad and the whole mosaic-lifetime thing? I don’t know. The point is Aunt Julia said that once the key goes in the clock, the portal will open, and it will call him through, wherever he’s been hiding out in that other timeline.”

Alice looked down at the time key again. She didn’t know how it could possibly be here, in 2047-- how it had _been around her neck_ for decades before that-- when Alice knew, better than anyone, that it had been destroyed at Blackspire years before that.

That _Alice_ had destroyed it. 

But as she stared at the deceptively simple brasswork, she found that she didn’t care all that much about _how_ it was here; or-- she _did_ , but she knew there would be time for that later. Right now, she could only think about the first time that Quentin had told her how he and Eliot had _really_ gotten this key, what they had _really_ shared together at the mosaic. 

( _That’s-- I think that’s part of why it was so hard for me to forgive you for destroying them_ , he’d said, sitting in the living room in Modesto-- Theo barely a year old and crawling all over him as usual, trying to eat his long hair. _That key, it-- Eliot_ died _for it._

_Actually,_ Eliot had said from the doorframe, where he was bouncing newborn Lucy, so that Alice could continue to rest on the couch, _I_ lived _for it._ )

Alice breathed in deeply and held the key out to Theo. “Take it,” she said. “Now. Go and get him.”

She paused, then added. “For _all_ of us.” 

A watery smile broke out across Theo’s face as she took the key. But she hesitated before leaving the office.

“Are you sure? It’s-- it’s probably going to take two casters to fix the wellspring.” 

Alice stepped around the desk and kissed Theo’s forehead-- this dear, reckless, difficult young woman who cared so damn much about Fillory, and who had pretended every day for more than a year that her heart wasn’t broken from losing the man who’d quietly loved Fillory just as much as she did, just as much as his partner famously did. The man who’d told Alice once, over a third glass of wine, that he owed his life to Fillory, because Fillory had given him Q and had given him their family-- twice over. The man who had loved Fillory so much, in fact, that when a power-mad librarian decided he needed someone whose love for Fillory was true to activate the secret sea, he’d taken Eliot, and punished Eliot when Eliot refused to play along if it meant putting Fillory-- and his family-- at risk.

“ _Go_ ,” Alice insisted. 

She looked back at the desk, at the glass butterfly still resting on the pages, and thought of all the people in-- in their family, who carried their parents’ legacies, for better and worse. 

“I have someone who can help me with Zelda’s spell,” she said.

  


_Midtown Manhattan, Earth - July 2019_

“Okay,” Julia said, raising her hands in time with Margo. “You ready?”

Alice nodded, and the demigoddess and the High King’s hand began the tuts for Mayakovsky’s spell, while Kady stood poised off to the side, crouched in front of the ingredients for the memory spell.

Alice closed her eyes then, shutting out Julia and Margo and Kady and Kady’s clean room, and when she opened them--

  


_Whitespire Castle, Fillory - March 2046 [Earth date equivalency]_

\--she wasn’t in Kady’s penthouse anymore. 

_It didn’t feel like being in someone else’s body_ , was her first thought. The second thought wasn’t so much a thought as a feeling-- the guilt ( _always the guilt_ ) at the memory of Quentin, worn-thin and trying so hard to reason in a register that she had already transcended (for the time being, anyway), and of how she knew _exactly_ what it felt like to take over someone else’s body.

She’d expected this to feel the same, she realized. That’s how she’d been thinking of it-- taking over someone else’s body. Her future self’s. _Aunt Alice’s_.

But that wasn’t how this felt at all. 

She looked down at her lap. The skirt and the dark tights that she saw weren’t chosen by a stranger. The skirt was longer, a little more tailored than the pleated one she’d left behind in 2019, but she could tell that it was _hers_ \-- or, it would be. So were the hands neatly folded together on the houndstooth fabric-- and not just because she could lift them and make the fingers bend. They looked a little-- _older_ , maybe, in a way that that gave her an unpleasant flash of Stephanie and the tube of lily-of-the-valley scented lotion that she had a magician in Paris deliver by special portal once a month, and the sharp, dewy scent as she popped the cap and complained about wrinkles and puffy veins. But these short fingers, the neatly clipped nails were recognizably Alice’s own. Even the navy-blue-almost-black polish was something she could imagine choosing.

(The dainty band on the third finger of her left hand was also something she could imagine choosing, aesthetically at least, but she was pushing that thought aside, for now.)

She shook her head, noting and then setting to one side the way the ends of her hair unexpectedly brushed her jaw instead of her shoulder as she did. She barely had an hour here. She needed to focus.

Taking stock of the scene, she registered that she was sitting on a comfortable leather chair, with her stocking-feet resting on a heavy-pile carpet, a pair of flats kicked to one side beside one of the chair’s wooden legs. There was something about the luxuriousness of the carpet, the contrasting swirls of purple and gold, that made Alice think, with unexpected sentimentality, that she probably could have guessed that Eliot had chosen it, even if she _hadn’t_ known where she was. The same was true of the jewel-tone cushions with the mirrored beads and the gold stitching that were strewn around the room, and the enormous tapestry depicting one unicorn mounting another from behind-- with surprising tenderness, for something that was somehow both anatomically obscene and rendered entirely in embroidery floss. Other items in the room, though, like the lumpy pile of blue and gray and hunter green shirts in front of the enormous wooden wardrobe, or the paperback with the torn-paper tabs sitting on the end table beside Alice’s chair, or, she noted with a quickly sucked-in breath, the _ram’s head clock_ in the corner, were-- well, she probably could have guessed that they would belong in Eliot’s future bedroom, too, actually. Even if Eliot never would have chosen them by himself. _Because_ Eliot never would have chosen them by himself.

It was a _home_ , she thought, as she took in the dark lacquered boots and the sneakers side-by-side along the heavy masonwork wall, the wrought-iron candelabra with a Brakebills lanyard and visitor badge hanging from an arm, a child’s drawing tacked to one of the solid wardrobe’s open doors, faded but still rendered in almost as many colors as the array of delicately-made shirts and coats inside. It was a medieval castle on a planet that still wasn’t finished going through its medieval period, and somehow it felt more like the warm and lived-in houses on the sitcoms that she used to watch with Charlie-- the ones with the refrigerator magnets and the throw blankets and the parents that bantered while the kids dramatically threw down their backpacks and collapsed into a kitchen chair-- than Daniel and Stephanie’s museum-quality corner of Chicago ever had.

A harsh, shallow breath from the direction of the ornate four-poster bed drew Alice’s attention. At first all she could see was the rich amber duvet, piled up in places and still big enough to trail off the sides of the massive bed and onto the floor. It took a moment to notice the silky slash of royal blue near the top of the bed, next to where an incongruously dull bit of dark fabric was also peeking out from under the mountain of pillows. It took a moment beyond _that_ to realize that the blue was a dressing gown, and that the bony shape it was covering was _Eliot_ , curled up with his back to her, only his shoulders and the dark curls now shot through with silver visible above the thick, damask bedspread. 

Alice wasn’t sure if it was a memory lingering in her future self’s head, or an image she was conjuring herself out of the pain in Quentin’s eyes when Theo had told them what happened to Eliot and the desperation in his voice when he’d said _I’m always going to want to save you_. Either way, she could see it so clearly-- Quentin, hair grayer and trimmed into something more respectable, dressed to travel, one hand hovering over those sunken shoulders, face tilted so that Eliot wouldn’t see him cry, looking to Alice like she could tell him how to make himself stand up and walk away knowing it would be the last time.

The image, and the accompanying pull in her ( _not really_ ) borrowed heart, was enough to snap her attention back to the mission at hand. Forcing in a deep breath, she raised her hands and began the tuts for De Padua’s locator spell. It was a simple spell, one taught in the first couple weeks at Brakebills (and one Alice had picked up by observation long before that, each time Stephanie misplaced her keys or Daniel left a book in a room he couldn’t remember). It didn’t have anything like the range that Sheila’s natural queromancy had, but it would draw forth the time key, as long as the key was in a twenty-foot radius. 

As she progressed through the familiar, repetitive sequence, Alice scanned the room, looking for any sign of the key rising out of a crevice or battering against a drawer. As she did, her eyes stuck on the clearly-not-from-Fillory photographs covering the bedside table. She told herself to keep moving, but there were just so many, in a melange of stone and wood and metal frames that somehow all went together, even while clashing miserably. There were _tons_ of a gangly, wild-haired little girl that could only be Theo. One of Theo with another petite girl with straight black hair and a serious little face that made Alice smile for some reason. Fen, with silver streaks in her long braid, grinning hugely as she tried to wrap her arms around four bear cubs at once. Eliot and Margo making duck lips at the camera-- that one Alice thought she might have seen back in Eliot’s room at the cottage. The one closest to what was apparently Eliot’s side of the bed showed Quentin-- the young Quentin that Alice still easily recognized-- with long hair falling in his face, as he stared down at a baby with dark wispy curls that was wrapping a wrinkled little fist around his finger, like there was nothing else to see in any world. There were others of Margo and Eliot, a bearded Quentin and Julia, Fen looking misty-eyed but determined while an infant Theo chewed on the tie of her nightgown. Toward the back there was one of Kady in a sleek white pantsuit with no shirt underneath, standing beside her frankly overwhelmed-looking second-in-command Pete, who had a flower pinned on his own jacket. And next to that one was--

_Oh._

Next to that one was _Alice_ , in a white dress with a crinoline, smiling shyly from behind the same square glasses she’d been wearing when she had shut her eyes back in Kady’s clean room. She was standing next to a man with jet-black hair and kind eyes that crinkled behind his own plastic-framed glasses as he met Alice’s grin. His hands were laced with pale scars.

The shock of that photograph stunned Alice so much that she didn’t notice that the little pendant around her future self’s neck was levitating, until it floated into her line of sight. Once she saw it, she narrowed her eyes, bringing her hands up to the back of her bare neck, to unclasp the fine gold chain. She slid the necklace off carefully and raised it up, so that she could see the still-floating key charm properly.

It was only about as big as the pad of Alice’s thumb-- nowhere close to the size of the time key. Its gold was newer and shinier and the knob at the top was full of intricate loops. But it had those same boxy little teeth, only shrunken down to miniature. 

Alice set the necklace down on her knee so that she could form the basic tuts for unmasking metal. She watched as the little pendant stretched, its delicate curlicues flattening out into the simple circle-and-triangle that she recognized, its bulk thickening layer by layer, like adding coats of paint, until it was as ancient and heavy and weathered as it had been in Quentin’s hands. When Alice picked it up again, she thought she could feel it humming.

“Well _that_ ’s a plot twist.”

Eliot’s voice-- thready and scoured-out, but still unmistakable-- caught Alice off-guard, and her hand tightened around the key. She’d been so focused on its transformation that she hadn’t noticed Eliot waking and carefully twisting his body to face her.

He was half-propped up on his elbows, listing heavily to one side. He looked like even coming those few inches off the mattress had exhausted him. The circles under his eyes were blue-black, darker than Alice remembered seeing them during the months that Eliot had fallen apart before they went to Fillory to fight the Beast, darker even than the two times she’d seen the monster’s greasy-faced, sweaty-haired take on Eliot the consummate dandy. But his thick-lashed eyes-- the ones he’d passed on to Theo-- were still alert and intrigued, as he scrutinized the key in Alice’s hand, even if there were lines at the corners that the version of Eliot she’d left in Kady’s penthouse hadn’t earned yet. And the hair curling around his ears was still thick and mostly dark, although the salt was beginning to overtake the pepper, especially around his temples. 

_Before you even go all-the-way gray_ , Quentin had said, when Theo told them what would happen to Eliot, in thirty years’ time. He’d been startlingly accurate in his prediction of what those years would do to Eliot. But then, of course he had, Alice realized, the pieces falling together once again. Because it hadn’t been a prediction at all, really, but a memory-- or _fifty years_ of memories, maybe-- of him watching Eliot’s body change, and Eliot watching his, minute by minute, day by day.

“A little help here?” Eliot prompted, as Alice continued to stare. She shook herself and reached forward to help guide him back against the wall of pillows. She ignored the way that her lined hands seemed familiar with the task, almost as hard as she ignored the way the bones of Eliot’s back felt bird-like, when she was used to thinking of him as a giant-- not just tall, but strapping, less the fairy-tale prince he dressed as, and more the big bad wolf. Or maybe the handsome, virile hunter that saved the valiant if impractical hero from the wolf’s cold clutches. 

“So,” he said, more than a little breathless, once he was propped against the pillows, “did someone happen to solve an impossible puzzle while I was out?”

His question was determinedly casual, even as his gaze kept slipping away from Alice’s face to the time key, lying antique and almost dull against the glossy bed linens, where Alice had set it down while she’d helped maneuver him into place. 

“Was it Greg?” he tried again, just as casual. “Don’t tell me if it was Greg and I lost my last opportunity to run off to a primitive cabin in the woods with him.”

It took Alice a moment to register who Greg was-- _would_ be. But once she did, she didn’t have to feign the drop of her jaw.

Eliot’s blithe attempt at a smile twitched into something that actually looked almost real. “If you say it’s still too soon for me to make that joke, I’ll be forced to remind you that . . .”

His show of cheer seemed to stall at that, as his eyes dropped down to the key again. 

Alice knew, from seething and suffering through so many group strategy sessions-- not to mention from the younger Eliot’s performance that evening in the cottage-- that the best way to handle Eliot’s attempts to launch a charm offensive on his mortality was usually to weather it, until he wore out his _don't-mind-me-I-wear-doomed-so-well_ energy and was ready to face the matter at hand. All the same, Alice could _feel_ every minute ticking by, and couldn’t have stopped the stern, “ _Eliot_ ,” that tumbled out of her mouth if she had wanted to. “I need you to listen to me. We--”

Eliot looked back up at her. There was a spark of-- hope, maybe, in his eyes, or maybe just curiosity, but it was quickly covered with disinterest. “Yes, well, I can see that you have your Very Serious Plan face on,” he said, speaking over the start of her explanation. “I just--”

His forehead wrinkled into something like a frown; it was hard to tell, against the lines of tension already carved into his brow. “--I’m not sure if it’s an auspicious sign or not, given that last time that particular key came out to play, I--”

_Died_ , he didn’t manage to say. He didn’t need to. 

Alice’s heart gave an unexpected thud as the other shoe dropped, and she finally put together how Eliot and Quentin’s mysterious quest at the mosaic must have ended. Quentin had already told Alice, inadvertently, of course-- not that she’d understood it at the time. _The keys that we all-- that Eliot_ died _for_ , he’d said. After fifty years together. After death did them part.

Without meaning to, Alice looked down again to the ring on her future hand. When she looked back to Eliot, the possible frown on his face had grown darker and undeniable. He looked far more mournful than he had saying that his _own_ time was running short, which probably should have told Alice what would come next.

“Q . . . he saw it, my-- death. _That_ time. Do you remember him telling you about it?”

Alice thought about ignoring the question and launching back into her explanation. To keep them on schedule, yes. But also so that she could say that she wasn’t actually who Eliot thought she was, that Quentin wouldn’t tell _her_ the time of day let alone anything about their secret lifetime together, and Eliot shouldn’t be trusting her with something so clearly precious to him, either. But she just shook her head, instead, which felt truer, somehow.

“Even after all this time, he and I have never--” Eliot continued, the rasp of his voice fading in and out as he spoke, even as the furrow in his brow stayed put. “He was working the puzzle-- alone, even with his bad back, the stubborn old mule. I was sitting right there in the chair, watching him. It was-- just like going down for a nap, really,” he said, before swallowing thickly. “For me, anyway.” 

He made a sound then that Alice might have guessed was a laugh, or a maybe just a clearing of the throat, if she hadn’t seen the way his eyes filled. “I remember thinking-- Ted, our son, he was, he was already gone by then, off living on the other side of the forest, near the sea . . .”

“Eliot,” Alice tried again, reaching for her steely purpose, like it could armor her against the lost look in Eliot’s eyes. “We need to--”

But Eliot’s eyes bored into her, and the words stuck in her throat. “Please, Alice,” he said. “Just-- let me say _one_ real thing before-- before _whatever_ happens.”

He reached for Alice’s hand then, and Alice was too surprised by the touch of his cool, papery fingers to pull away or to get them back on track. 

“ _Thank you_ ,” he said, voice scraped away to almost nothing. “For making sure that he-- that he’ll be less _alone_ this time.”

Alice wanted to tell herself that the aching, open look that Eliot gave her then wasn’t really _for_ her, but for the person she was somehow supposed to figure out how to be between her time and his. But it was too close to the way his younger self had looked at her from Kady’s balcony, the way he’d looked at her in the cottage when Quentin tried to go off half-cocked to kill Everett, even the way he’d looked at her from over top of Quentin’s head back at Brakebills South, for the rationalization to be convincing. Instead, Alice looked down, letting the feeling of being trusted so fully wash through her.

When she did, she finally noticed Eliot’s _other_ hand. Not the one that was weakly resting on her own, but the one that was gripping that dull edge of black fabric tucked beneath the unused pillows beside him.

It was a sleeve cuff, she realized, heart cracking. The ribbed, faded cuff of a plain, black hoodie.

And Eliot was holding it like he was holding onto the hand he’d sent away. 

Eliot followed the line of her gaze, and his face went almost embarrassed. But he pulled the hoodie-- _Quentin_ ’s old hoodie-- out from under the pillow and into his lap, all the same. 

“I didn’t want to make him watch again,” he said quietly. “I-- I wish he was here, though. Guess that makes me pretty stupid, huh?”

She didn’t know what the future Alice, the Alice she was becoming, would say to Eliot’s question, or to the overwhelming regret in his eyes. She didn’t know if future Alice would still hear the mouse simpering _of course it was stupid, everything we do is a mess and there’s never any fixing it_ , or the niffin scoffing _we don’t have_ time _for this_. The Alice that she still was thought both of those things. But she thought of other things, too.

She thought of purple paisley balled up beneath Quentin’s pillow, of the way that Eliot had run his thumb so carefully along the back of Quentin’s hand in Kady’s apartment, as Quentin ripped off a piece of notebook paper and marked a spot in Mayakovsky’s journal, asking _did you remember your pill_ ? She thought of Quentin promising to live for Eliot with gentle, awestruck eyes, and she thought of Quentin’s tight, chagrined face when Eliot had shot the monster back at Blackspire, the way it never fully unclenched until the monster was gone and he had Eliot back. She thought, as she watched Eliot cradle the empty sweater so tenderly in hands he was pretending weren’t shaking, of the confusing balance between protecting someone you-- you _loved_ from their worst impulses, without giving in to your own.

Then, she thought about the fact that this whole absurd, time-jumping rescue mission-- which the clock was still ticking on, she knew that, too-- was only possible because Eliot had gotten the balance _wrong_ , this time, had deprived himself of the comfort of having the man he loved at his side, and deprived that man the comfort of easing whatever part of Eliot’s pain he could.

And she thought-- she tried to think-- she _made herself_ think. How the mission was _also_ only possible because a foolish mouse had destroyed a magical key (or tried to) before anyone could learn whether it was a dummy or not.

_If you fucked up, then you fucked up, and there’s no coming back,_ she thought about telling Eliot. Except here was the proof all around her, that sometimes there _was_ coming back, even from that bus to Modesto. Or maybe there was just coming somewhere _new_ , somewhere that all of your fuck-ups let you find in the first place.”

“I think,” she finally said, choosing her words carefully, “that the question isn’t really whether you did the right thing or not.”

Eliot quirked an eyebrow at her then, and Alice realized that she was actually beginning to get _used_ to it-- those hazel eyes looking at her like they were on the same team. 

She slid the time key deliberately across the blankets toward Eliot, lifting her chin as she did.

“I think what matters,” she said, “is what we do _next_.”

  


_Brakebills University, New York - July 2047_

The faculty office building was completely dark as Alice strode out of the portal to Brakebills. Luckily, she knew the building well enough that the dark didn’t make her break her stride, as she marched through the corridor and out the front door, across the empty sea and into the library.

It hadn’t been hard to guess-- even at this hour, even in the middle of summer break-- where the person Alice needed would be. If she had realized that Theo had cast the spell by now (which she almost certainly had), then she would, Alice knew, be researching for every contingency. And Alice didn’t need any family-specific telepathy to know where she’d go to do that. 

Not when Alice knew exactly where _she_ would have gone, in her daughter’s shoes.

Sure enough, once Alice reached the third floor of the library and turned right, smelled that lingering, improbable smell of ripe bananas in the air, she saw it-- the single desk lamp lighting one seat at the backmost table. 

At the sound of Alice’s determined footsteps, Lucy looked up from the heavy book in front of her. And _there_ were those same blue eyes, those same thick glasses that she used like a barrier, like that much concern could hide behind facts and figures and clear glass.

“Is she--” Lucy started.

Alice held up her hand. “Theo is _fine_.”

The tension drained out of Lucy at Alice’s words. Alice thought about reaching out to gather Lucy in her arms, her first baby. She _would_ , later. But there was something they needed to do first, and Alice-- and they _both_ were people who’d want to make sure that the job was done, that their people were _safe_ , before taking the time to be relieved together. 

So when Lucy blew out a sigh and looked back up at Alice, Alice only placed a hand on the side of her sweet, serious little face and said, “I can take you to Theo later, but first I need your help. With a spell.”

Lucy pulled back, their fight that evening (and the several evenings before that) clearly not forgotten. “Why me?” she asked, the skepticism in the tone nearly breaking Alice’s heart with its familiarity. 

Alice took a deep breath and met those blue eyes squarely, speaking as much to the girl _she_ had been as to the woman that _Lucy_ had become. “Because,” she said, “ I _trust_ you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more (critical) flashback chapter, and then it's reunion time!
> 
> NEXT TIME: In 2024, the pieces of a plan that no one remembers come together for the very first time.


	8. VIII. THEN

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Twenty-three years before Theo goes into the past, the Coldwater-Waughs take their first trip to Modesto, and Alice (unwittingly) chooses the path that makes their future possible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final flashback chapter! I can't tell you how much it means to me that you're still reading! 
> 
> This chapter is near and dear to my heart: I think of it as the happy beginning that sets up all the happy beginnings to come in the next (final!) chapter. I hope you enjoy it.

VIII. THEN

_Modesto, California_ \- _October 2024_

Alice was standing in front of the ancient refrigerator (whose interior light was flickering concerningly, _again_ ) trying to decide whether to pretend that she had the energy to make bacon, or to just give in and get out the milk for her sixth bowl of Frosted Cheerios in twenty-four hours, when the sliding glass door to the backyard opened. 

She looked over her shoulder, ignoring the way the movement made even the soft, oversized pajama-shirt of Greg’s she was wearing drag across her sore nipples--

\--and saw a rabbit, almost pure white, sitting on the linoleum floor.

“Uh, this guy was waiting on the stoop,” Greg said as he stepped through the doorway behind the visitor, the baby in his arms. “I think he may have been out there for a while.”

He quirked his small, easy smile at Alice, as he continued to jiggle Lucy, who was miraculously quiet, the way that (to Alice’s mind, anyway) she only seemed to get after Greg took her outside to their back stoop to feel the early-morning sun. As always, Alice felt a confusing and overwhelming throb of love-- not just in her heart, but _everywhere_ \-- at the sight of Lucy’s tiny, solemn face.

“I don’t know if your friends are going to owe him overtime now,” Greg said, nodding toward the bunny. “But. Guess we know the new wards work.”

Alice closed the refrigerator, which was now whining dangerously, and considered, even as love for her brand new child continued to slosh through her veins, if there was a way to rework the warding spells to let messengers from known sources through the barrier. Assuming this particular messenger was from a known source, of course, she added mentally.

The bunny quickly cleared up any ambiguity on that front by letting out a smokers’ cough and wheezing, “YOU FINALLY POPPED. YAY.”

Greg raised both eyebrows above his glasses. “I’m guessing that’s--”

“Eliot,” Alice confirmed wearily. If it were Margo, the anatomical allusion would have been a lot more explicit. And if it were Q-- well, if it were up to Q, there’d be no bunny at all, probably. Because he probably would have settled on conveying heartfelt but somehow still awkward congratulations the next time Eliot invited them over to Whitespire for some kind of brunch or dinner or _intimate garden soiree_ that turned out to be a surprise, welcome-to-the-new-baby party attended by a couple thousand Fillorian citizens that Alice had never met, all bearing gifts-- if their surprise baby shower was any indication. Alice had had to build a pocket dimension into the nursery closet just to fit all the toys they’d received at the shower-- even _after_ she had Greg had culled the ones that were bladed, possibly cursed, or just outright disturbing. 

Quentin had spoken maybe three sentences that were directed to _her_ \-- and not just generally to the clump of Kady, Julia, Penny, and Josh that had surrounded her-- during the entire party.

_He has his reasons_ , Alice reminded herself ( _not that she needed much reminding_ ), as she raised her hands to tinker with the strands of magic that made up the house’s protective wards. She’d rebuilt them a few months ago, after Greg had gently suggested that she channel her growing prenatal panic into some kind of a project. She hooked both pinkies together and _pulled_ , and the equations that powered the new wards appeared in shimmering blue light on the air in front of her face.

While Alice worked through the tangles, Greg opened the refrigerator then the cupboard and began pouring a bowl of cereal one-handed. Once he’d set the bowl down on the table, he came to stand facing Alice, on the opposite side of the equations she was projecting.

“Have you thought anymore about building a projection system for the card catalog at the library?” he asked. 

Alice’s hands didn’t falter-- they couldn’t while she was casting-- but she did press her lips together.

Greg ran a hand down Lucy’s little back, over the soft onesie covered with tiny rainbows and smiling clouds. It had been a gift from Kady-- probably picked out by Pete, because Alice couldn’t imagine Kady in a baby store. The rainbow onesie had been one in a set of two. The second had had dozens of little butterflies in each of the rainbows’ colors. 

Alice had thrown that one away, claiming the dye had bled in the wash. 

“I meant the _Brakebills_ library,” Greg said after a moment-- gentle, but without apologizing for something that wasn’t his fault. He was so _good_ at that, Alice always thought-- knowing which things were actually _his_ to apologize for, and which things were just things to feel bad about and then let go.

( _Well, I’ve had a lot of practice,_ he’d said once, his fingers running along her belly, which-- at that time-- hadn’t yet become a mess of stretchmarks.) 

Alice carefully pressed the tips of her middle fingers into her thumbs, drawing out a long golden strand of power between them. 

It was-- the thing they were talking around (or, that _she_ was talking around-- outside the safe space of their bedroom, under the quilt, with the lights out) was that _Sheila_ had come by yesterday, under the guise of meeting the new baby. She’d brought diapers-- which was the most actually helpful gift they’d received so far. She’d also brought Zelda’s continuing assurance that there was always a place in the Order for Alice if Alice ever changed her mind. Alice had relayed the conversation to Greg last night, in the minutes that Lucy hadn’t been howling.

Alice focused on the string of magic between her hands, forcing the conversation with Sheila out of her mind. That was-- something to deal with later, all those nagging questions that Alice still couldn’t answer about right and wrong and her own broken judgment, the kind of questions that she didn’t have to worry about as long as her sole professional responsibility was keeping the university’s library catalog properly organized. 

“Maybe when I’m back from maternity leave,” she finally answered Greg’s original question. “Assuming Fogg hasn’t let the first-years burn the library down by--”

She stopped immediately, sucking in her lips and pausing her spellwork. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean that.”

But Greg was shaking his head gently, his scarred hand still patting Lucy’s back in the same steady rhythm. “Whatever happens in your absence, I promise you it won’t be one of my pyromancers who are responsible. I make no guarantees for those phosphoromancy troublemakers, though.”

Alice felt her mouth curl into a relieved smile that she probably didn’t deserve to enjoy, cold bitch that she could still be sometimes. ( _Only sometimes, silly mouse?)_ When Greg smiled back, the corners of his eyes crinkling behind his glasses in a way that felt genuine, Alice let herself go back to the spell, hunting around for the final strand that she needed to tweak. 

Greg walked around the projection and kissed the top of her head, without interfering with her progress. “I’m going to portal to campus in a few minutes,” he said. 

(The creation of a Modesto portal had been a condition of Alice taking the vacant librarian position at Brakebills, when Fogg had offered it to her a few years ago. As had been Brakebills formally petitioning the Order to restore Modesto’s ambient enough to support a standing portal in the first place, _and_ to lift Alice’s still-outstanding sentence in the process. It turned out that Fogg, for all his habitual fatalism, could actually be a shockingly effective leader when he ceded the actual decisionmaking to apple-of-his-eye Professor Wicker. Which also explained Brakebills’ new and extraordinarily competitive parental leave policies.)

Greg hefted Lucy higher in his arms and surveyed her sagging, rainbow-printed seat. “Actually, I better go make another dent in Sheila’s gift before I leave,” he said, with a grimace that was mostly for show.

Alice smiled gratefully if absently, as she zeroed in on the line of characters that she needed to change in the ward spell. She didn’t realize Greg was still hovering in the doorway with Lucy, until he spoke again.

“For what it’s worth, as personally happy as I am that you decided to come work at Brakebills”-- _to have met you_ , he didn’t have to say-- “I still say the Order would be lucky to have you. And _I’d_ sleep a lot better knowing that _you_ were helping to guide their calculus on who deserves access to magical knowledge and who doesn’t.”

Alice’s hands did fumble, then, at the unusual bitterness in his last words, and the deep hurt-- the _scars_ \-- that she knew lay behind it.

“Greg,” she started, unsure where to go. “I’m not--” _any better than they are. I’m just the same_ . _I’m still the one who--_

Greg just watched her sadly. “That’s just-- in case another perspective helps. I support you no matter what,” he said-- and _meant_ it. Alice swallowed hard.

He gave her one more smile from the doorway. “Don’t forget your cereal, okay?”

Alice nodded and twisted her hands roughly through the the final movements, blinking rapidly as she did. When she finished, she sat down in front of the bowl of cereal, which-- she realized with a soft pang behind her breastbone-- Greg had charmed to not go soggy while she worked. She took a heaping spoonful, letting her gritty eyes shut while she chewed, telling herself that the strain and the tension in her temples was only because Lucy had screamed through the night. 

When she opened her eyes, there was a second bunny on the table in front of her, sniffing experimentally at her bowl. Alice felt a beat of satisfaction that she’d altered the wards successfully, even on approximately two hours of sleep. 

Then the bunny opened its mouth.

Contrary to Alice’s immediate fears, Eliot and Quentin _did_ wait for her to respond to the bunny’s “OKAY TO DROP BY?” before actually showing up at her doorstep. In fact, they gave her a few hours beyond that, during which time she managed to feed Lucy again and get her down to sleep in the little cradle in the living room, but not to change into real pants or to put away the piles of folded laundry on the sofa, the arm chair, the coffee table, or the top of the TV. Alice had just enough time to wonder, again, how it was that a creature that barely weighed ten pounds could be more exhausting than-- well, virtually anything else Alice had ever encountered, actually, when her wards glowed yellow to tell her that there was someone on the doorstep. Without getting up from her seat on the sofa, she unlocked the front door-- because, while she might not have had Eliot’s natural facility for telekinesis, she’d made herself pick up basics, and there was no way in hell she was going to risk a knock on the door waking Lucy again.

Luckily, her guests took the hint and entered without knocking, Eliot first, with two covered pans in his hands and a stuffed unicorn larger than Lucy’s entire crib floating at his side. Quentin followed, with little Theo clinging to him like a barnacle, her already-thick black curls tucked under his chin while she gripped at the collar of his shirt.

Eliot’s daughter in every way.

“California dreamin’ indeed,” the man himself said after a moment, making Alice all too aware of the fact that neither he nor Q had ever actually come to Modesto before. He was standing in the middle of the living room, surveying the old-fashioned furniture Sheila’s mom had picked out, and the glass animals that would have to go into a drawer somewhere once Lucy became mobile, and the laundry and the ugly carpet and the stacks of books that Greg kept dutifully bringing back from the library so that Alice could think about something other than feeding schedules and diaper rash and the genuinely scary tide of love that felt like it was rushing through her all the time now, uncontained and uncontrollable, even when Lucy was screaming her head off. 

Alice couldn’t imagine that their little home looked like much to Eliot the Spectacular. But he only nodded as he finished turning a circle. When his eyes lit on Alice, with her pink plaid pajama pants and towel-dried hair and absolutely no makeup at all, he raised one eyebrow.

“If I’m being completely honest,” he intoned, “this is not my _least_ favorite of your fashion choices.” His eyes glowed for a moment, when he added, “I don’t suppose there’s any chance Greg is home, is there?”

Alice rolled her eyes, but she suspected that she didn’t do as good a job at looking stern as she wanted to. Luckily, Quentin managed it for her.

“ _El_ ,” he said warningly from Eliot’s side, keeping his voice low to not wake the baby.

Eliot waved his concern off, literally, using his telekinesis to keep the pans floating as he did. “ _Moving on_ ,” he said, shooting Quentin a look that was more indulgent than apologetic (and more besotted even than _that_ , especially as his daughter began nibbling happily on the ends of Quentin’s hair), before turning back to Alice. “Is there somewhere I can put these? Chef Hoberman originals-- without any of the fun stuff that people who are breastfeeding and/or responsible for an infant life should avoid ingesting. No need to get up,” he quickly added, holding his hand out as soon as Alice began shifting her weight on the couch. “New moms definitely do not have to show guests around. Just point me in the direction of the kitchen.”

She did, and he disappeared, re-emerging a moment later with a horrified look on his face. 

“Have you considered that your refrigerator may actually be possessed by something-- other than the ghost of Carol Brady’s interior decorator?” he asked. “Seriously. I think you may need to call in the Sorrow Twins.”

Quentin’s arms tightened around Theo at that-- because enough time still hadn’t passed, apparently, for him to think of Margo’s possession-expelling axes (and what she thought she'd have to do with them, before the Binder offered his spell, anyway), without flinching. _Because enough time would never pass_ \-- not for Quentin, anyway. 

Eliot was careful not to visibly react to Quentin’s reaction, but Alice suspected that the hand he smoothed over Quentin’s suddenly tight shoulders only _looked_ careless.

“Even if an exorcism isn’t required,” he continued, squeezing the back of Quentin’s neck gently before pulling his hand away, “you should have Q look at the demon appliance before we leave. He’s getting very good at repair spells.”

Quentin preened a little at Eliot’s words, even as he shook his head. “Hazard of breaking so much stuff in the first place, I guess,” he said noncommittally.

Eliot frowned but didn’t push it. Instead, he nodded toward the gargantuan unicorn still hovering in Alice’s living room, and changed the topic. “Point me toward the nursery so that I can bring this strapping fellow to his new home?” he asked. “I’m guessing up the _actually carpeted_ stairs?”

Alice sighed. “There is no place in the nursery that that thing will fit. It might not even get through the door.”

But Eliot was already halfway up the ( _yes_ , actually carpeted) stairs, the unicorn floating behind him.

When man and mythical creature were both out of sight, Quentin looked at Alice and quirked a conspiratorial grin that made Alice’s heart ache, just for a moment, with the memory of the boy he’d been once, and with how much she still _missed_ him sometimes-- the floppy-haired kid with more passion than common sense, who’d been her friend first despite their differences, before any of the more complicated things they’d tried and failed to be to each other.

“He made Penny take us to Babies R Us on the way here,” he said leaning in, his smirk growing as he brushed at Theo’s unruly hair with a gentle hand. “I told him we should have just gotten a bottle warmer.” 

Alice smiled, as much at the story as at the unexpected but welcome feeling of easy _connection_ between them. Those moments of connection only seemed to come in flashes here and there these days, isolated points in a larger field of awkward silence that neither of them knew how to cross (or maybe only Alice even _wanted_ to cross), no matter how much time they spent around each other, with the shared friends that had somehow accepted Alice back into their fold after Blackspire and Modesto and Brakebills South. 

Quentin returned Alice’s smile, and she felt her mouth wobble with gratitude at the moment stretching just a little longer, for now. _These new-mother hormones_ , she rationalized to herself, _were powerful stuff_.

Quentin, meanwhile, stepped closer to the cradle that held the little person who had set all those new-mother hormones off in the first place. He leaned over, keeping his hands firm and sure around Theo, and looked down at the sleeping baby. When he spoke, his voice was even softer than before. 

“So this is--”

“Lucy,” Alice said, not quite sure why the name came out choked, still, every time she said it, like there was so much inside of it that Alice-- for perhaps the first time in her life-- just couldn’t keep from bursting out. “Lucy Bernadette.”

When Quentin looked up from the cradle, there was something in his eyes, in the way he held Theo on his hip with so much care even as she smacked a sticky little hand against his neck, that made Alice feel like he would _understand,_ if Alice told him how every time she looked down at Lucy in her arms, it felt like she was being sliced down the center and everything she’d always tried so hard to keep inside was falling out and she suddenly didn’t _mind_.

“Alice, she’s so beautiful,” Q said, eyes sparkling. “ _Oh_. I mean, um, and smart, too. And powerful--”

Alice snorted, maybe a little bit wetly, as Quentin tried to improve the gender equities of his compliment, no doubt a result of Margo and Julia’s combined tutelage. He was saved from further fumbling when Theo, evidently requiring more of her dad’s attention than she was getting, began kicking her legs and, at the same time, managed to get a handful of the long hair that had fallen out of Quentin’s ponytail. 

“Hey hey, no,” he said, bringing gentle fingers up to the solid little wrist, trying to still the sharp tugs without hurting her.

“ _Ah ah_ , paws off, Little Miss.” 

Eliot, who had swept down the stairs-- without the unicorn-- in an elegant blur, lifted Theo out of Quentin’s arms with ease, the greedy little fist giving up its prize gladly at the prospect of a new audience. She squealed and made a series of guttural almost-words when Eliot smacked a loud kiss to her cheek. 

“Let’s leave the hair-pulling to Daddy,” he said, eyes full of mischief, as he reached out and softly twirled the strands that Theo had abandoned between two fingers. The exasperation that Quentin clearly tried to put in the look he returned couldn’t _begin_ to cover the overwhelming fondness in his deep brown eyes as he watched Eliot pretend to chomp down on Theo’s hand each time she made a grab for his distinguished nose. Eliot beamed back at Quentin.

Alice, watching with soft eyes from the couch, couldn’t help but think of the contrast. Between this man blowing raspberries into his daughter’s palm while making almost comically lovestruck eyes at his more-or-less husband, and the haunted specter who’d prowled the Physical Cottage, trying desperately to hide how much he cared about-- _anything_. And between the man carrying a diaper bag over his shoulder like it was a shield or a quiver, and the boy who’d always thought he had nothing worthy to give to the people that he loved.

“You’re both really good dads,” she heard herself saying, unpremeditated. Which-- once again, must have been because of Lucy and the buzzing, opening-up _something_ she had set loose inside of Alice. Because Alice didn’t speak without thinking first (unless it was in anger), and she especially didn’t speak without thinking first to Quentin, let alone to Eliot. 

Both men broke their shared gaze and turned to Alice. Eliot’s face was unexpectedly soft and pleased at Alice’s unplanned words, Quentin’s more uncomfortable with the praise, as usual. 

“Do you-- do you think you’ll have others? Other than Theo, I mean?”

The halting question came from some place deep inside Alice-- not quite from the wellspring of the immense feeling coursing through her, but from a place very close to it. The place that, despite the nine solid months of stressing and second-guessing Alice had done before Lucy’s birth, had said with absolute conviction _we’ll do this again_ as soon as the doctor put Lucy into her arms. She thought that Quentin and Eliot might-- might _understand_ that place, might have similar places of their own. But at her question, Eliot went still, his smile freezing into something blandly pleasant. Quentin looked down at his shoes, thick eyebrows pulling in.

“I’m sorry,” Alice immediately said, hot embarrassment rising in her face at whatever blunder she’d made. “That’s-- probably a personal question. I--”

But Eliot was already shaking his head, smile going wide and showy as he set Theo on the carpet, holding one of her hands in each of his, and helping her toddle over toward the cradle. 

Quentin stayed quiet.

“ _I_ think,” Eliot said with gusto, partly to Theo, partly to Alice, partly to the suggestion that anything awkward had just happened, “that it’s past time for a formal introduction to the newest arrival, yes?”

He made an assessing hum as he looked down into the cradle, the unimpressed tone at odds with the little smile that spread across his face. Theo wobbled as she tried to crane her chin up to look into the cradle, too, and Eliot caught her around the waist, coming down to his own knees so that he could put her on his hip and let her get a closer look at the sleeping baby. Alice was glad to see that he trapped both of Theo’s vice-like hands in one of his as he did, to keep her from deciding she wanted a handful of Lucy, too.

The restraint didn’t seem to bother Theo at all. “Bah!” she shrieked at the sight of the infant, in obvious delight. She repeated the noise for good measure.

“Shh,” Eliot told her, letting go of her hands to gently cover her mouth. His own voice was quieter than it had been a moment ago. “We have to be quiet. Baby is sleeping.”

To Alice, he quirked an eyebrow. “Typical Coldwater,” he sighed. “Barely a year old and already getting her head turned by a pretty little Quinn. Sorry-- Quinn- _Padilla_.”

Alice tried to smile at the entirely predictable joke on Eliot’s favorite uncomfortable topic, but she could feel that it came out tight and unconvincing. It was hard for it to do otherwise, when Quentin was still standing tenser than he had been before Alice had put her foot in something that she hadn’t realized was there, even though he’d moved over to the cradle to stand next to his partner and daughter and smile gently at the baby. 

The moment-- and Quentin’s reaction-- were emblematic of the way Alice’s relationship with Quentin had felt for the past few years, since she’d come out of her self-imposed exile and started keeping the shelves tidy at Brakebills, using the post as a space to begin gradually mending bridges. No matter how much better things were now than during the months of either silence or cold sniping that had followed what Alice had done to the keys (and what Quentin had done to _Alice_ , and what he had done _with_ Margo and Eliot, for that matter), there remained an invisible but unmistakable boundary between the two of them, with all the things that would hurt Quentin if they were destroyed on one side, and Alice on the other.

Eliot looked between Alice and Quentin and his eyebrows drew down, like he wanted to sigh again-- but in earnest this time. Lucy preempted him, however, the excitement in the room finally breaking through her nap. A familiar howl rose from the cradle. 

Alice winced and began to stand up, taking a moment as she did to marvel at the fact that, while she truly would sit through getting another cacodemon tattoo if it meant never hearing that never-ending yowl again, the sound somehow did nothing to detract from the bottomless ocean of feeling inside of her. 

Before she reached her feet, Eliot stopped her again.

“No, no, don’t get up,” he said. He set Theo down on the carpet; she stood on her own power for a few seconds, then tired of the endeavor and plopped down to a seat, the bulk of her diaper cushioning her landing. Eliot, meanwhile, reached into the cradle and picked up Lucy, bringing her expertly to his chest, her chin settling on the shoulder of his probably-silk shirt.

“Um, I can get you a burp cloth,” Alice said, lurching forward again.

“ _Sit_ ,” Eliot insisted. He levitated a towel off of the stack on the coffee table and situated it under Lucy’s chin. “Would you please just let us do something for _you_?”

His words took Alice aback, coming so quickly after the reminder of how little Quentin trusted her with the things that actually mattered to him. Eliot made it sound like-- like he realized, that she’d done things _for_ them, not just _to_ them, during the almost decade they’d known each other. 

She was choosing to believe that it was a combination of hormones, sleeplessness, and the love-bomb Lucy had set off inside her that made her feel like she might _actually_ cry at the sentiment. 

“Lucy the Also-Wise and I will get along just fine on our own,” Eliot was saying, unbothered by the continued squalling as he bounced the baby, beginning to walk in loping circles around the room. “She’s going to give me the grand tour, I think,” he said, shooting a significant look at Quentin, who’d taken a seat on the carpet with Theo, extending his legs out to block her from walking or crawling toward any of Alice’s as-yet un-childproofed things. “It’ll be a good opportunity for you two to _catch up_.”

Eliot gave one more imperious wag of his eyebrows, then turned and danced Lucy toward the kitchen. When he was gone, Quentin sighed.

“He really thinks he’s subtle.” 

He risked a glance up at Alice. For a moment, it looked like he wanted to say something, or like he was _deciding_ whether he wanted to say something. But the moment passed and he remained silent, holding one arm out so that Theo could play with his fingers. 

On the couch, Alice tucked her slippered feet beneath her thighs. “So. Um. Is Fen doing-- how is she?” she asked, after a stretch of uncomfortable silence, punctuated only by Theo’s occasional interested grunts. She realized the moment _after_ the words were out that Quentin and Eliot’s hesitation about other children might have something to do with Fen and with the postpartum depression she’d struggled with after Theo’s birth and the memories it brought back of the baby she and Eliot had lost in the early days of their marriage. 

Alice kicked herself mentally, but the question didn’t seem to bother Quentin the way the earlier mention of other children had. “Um, better, I think,” he said. “It’s a process, obviously, but I mean, she’s been going to see someone, and she says she finds it helpful, to talk about-- everything.” 

“She has a therapist? On Fillory?” Alice asked, surprised by the idea.

Quentin just nodded. “Yeah. El’s been-- he’s been working on, like, an exchange program? With the chief of the Cedars-Sinai psychiatry department-- who’s a magician, apparently. Turns out doing your residency on a fairytale planet with really fucked-up inhabitants and unreliable plumbing is actually still better than a lot of the other options.”

Alice nodded back, any remaining surprise at the idea of FIllory developing a mental health infrastructure brushed away by the quiet gratitude behind Quentin’s impersonal description. In that light, it only made _sense_ \-- that Eliot was casually shaping an entire planet to keep true to the pledge of _in sickness and in health_ that they probably didn’t even use on Fillory, even if he and Quentin ever got around to formalizing a connection that already seemed sometimes like it had spanned decades, rather than the five or so years Alice knew they’d actually been together.

“How have _you_ been?” Quentin asked abruptly, like he was just now realizing that Alice herself had given birth less than a couple weeks ago. 

Alice considered the question, registering her fuzzy head and the sand in her tired joints and the ache in her breasts that reminded her that Lucy would need to be fed again soon. “I feel like I haven’t slept in a year,” she finally said. “And I miss work. Or, at least-- I missing being around other adults. But.”

She bit her lip, then scooted closer to the edge of the couch, closer to where Quentin and Theo were sitting on the floor. “Q, I just-- I love her so much,” she confessed after a moment. “I didn’t know anything could feel like this. I didn’t think I would _want_ it to.”

It was that last part that had been the hardest for Alice to wrap her mind around, honestly. She had told herself, for so many years-- after Q, after Stephanie’s lifetime of _Alice Knows Best_ digs-- that she just-- wasn’t a person who _loved_ . She was too careful, too calculating. Too dependent on having her own space to think and sort and take care of what she needed to take care of before she was ready to focus on the _emotions_ of a situation. She’d thought all of that was incompatible with love-- that clinging, melting, holding-tight-and-never-letting-go thing that people like Quentin and Eliot did. Meeting Greg had shown her that that assumption was _wrong_ , maybe. That, maybe in reality, the way she tried to look after people was just-- another way of _expressing_ love. No less real, no less deep. The storm of what she felt for Lucy made that conclusion feel inescapable.

While Alice catalogued her thoughts, Quentin’s whole face went soft and droopy at her words, his thumb still locked between Theo’s fists as she tried to pull herself up to stand on his outstretched leg. 

“Yeah, I-- I get that,” he said, his free hand coming up to brace Theo’s back instinctively, even without looking away from Alice. “They change-- _everything_.”

He took a deep breath in through his nose, then set his jaw and said, “Listen, about what you asked earlier, about Eliot and me having more kids--”

“I shouldn’t have asked,” Alice interrupted him, shaking her head hard enough that her glasses bounced against the bridge of her nose. She paused to nudge them back. “I know that--”

She paused again, breathed in. It was time, she knew. To make the invisible barrier between them visible.

“It means so much to me that you-- that we’re friends again, after everything that happened,” she said, rushing past that word-- _friends_ \-- before anyone could contradict it. “But-- Quentin. I understand that there are things that-- that you might not want to share with me, anymore. That you might not ever . . .”

_Trust me with_.

Quentin listened to her halting speech with a blank expression. When she trailed off, he turned his eyes to the ceiling and let out a heavy exhale. 

“When you asked about us having more kids,” he said evenly, eyes still on the ceiling. “The reason we both-- the reason El and I acted like we did is because we already--”

He swallowed hard, then, and met Alice’s eyes again, his dark gaze more open than she’d seen from him in _years_ . “Alice, there are some things I probably should have-- there are some things you deserve to know. And I probably _should_ have told you before, but I think you’re probably right that it’s been hard for me to--”

_Trust you_. He left the words unspoken, too. 

After a moment he pulled Theo into his lap-- whether to keep her from wandering or as a comfort, Alice didn’t know. But once the baby was settled against him, his throat seemed to loosen and his eyebrows unfurled.

“I think it’s time I told you the truth,” he said. “About the key quest.”

Alice couldn’t have said _how_ she’d expected Quentin to end that sentence, but it wasn’t with a reference to the keys. She felt the usual rush of self-doubt and shame at the thought of the keys and what she had done at Blackspire-- not just to her friends, but to _Greg_ , even though she hadn’t known it at the time, to _everyone_ who relied on magic. But she pushed the feeling aside, focusing on letting Quentin say what he needed to say to her.

And he did. He told her about a mosaic, and a little cottage, and a fruit seller named Arielle, and a boy that Theo was named for-- with occasional interjections from Eliot, as he continued to make a circuit through the first floor of the house with Lucy, who within a few passes had mostly fallen asleep against his shoulder. When Quentin finally got to the end-- of _fifty years_ \-- Alice put a hand over her mouth. 

Her fingers were shaking against her lips.

“Alice?” Quentin prompted. His dark eyes were concerned-- for _her_ . Oh God, she hadn’t seen that expression from him in so long. It made everything inside her chest swell, even though she _knew_ , now more than ever, how little she deserved it.

“I should-- I should check on Lucy,” she said around the lump in her throat. Eliot had taken Lucy upstairs to her crib shortly after Quentin had reached the point in his story where he’d had to wrap the partner of his life in a quilt and dig a grave with his own two hands. Eliot’s face, as he’d turned jerkily away, had been pained and pale. Quentin had paused his telling until Eliot was out of earshot, soothing back Theo’s familiar dark curls as they waited. 

Quentin nodded at Alice now, although he looked uncertain, like he still wasn’t sure if he had done the right thing by speaking up. At his hesitant expression, Alice made herself stop, even though she was already off the couch and halfway to the steps, and turn to face him. 

“Thank you for telling me,” she said, seriously.

Quentin nodded again, the tension smoothing from his brow this time. 

Alice left him and Theo there playing on the rug, then took the stairs two at a time, stopping once she reached the top to brush roughly at the tears that were sneaking down from beneath her glasses. The ones she didn’t _deserve_ to cry. And yes she knew, she _knew_ that Greg always said that you could be in the wrong and still grieve the wrong done ( _I would know_ , he’d said simply). But she was _exhausted_ , and living off of cereal, and filled with more love, more joy, more _feeling_ than she’d experienced in her entire _life_ up to that point, and balancing the part of herself that hated who she was sometimes and the part that pitied that screwed-up girl who always and never knew best, was beyond her emotional capacity in this moment-- if it would ever be _within_ her capacity.

She stood there at the top of the stairs, telling herself to _stop crying, goddamnit_ , until she became aware of a voice, low and sweet, drifting down the hall, that made her freeze in place. 

“ _Don’t you_ \--” she heard it sing, a memory come to life, “ _forget about me_.”

She followed the quiet song, her heart in her throat, until she reached the open door of Lucy’s nursery. When she took a breath and looked inside, there was no memory at all, but _Eliot_ , standing vigilantly over the crib.

When he heard the footsteps at the door, he stopped singing and turned to face her with a rueful smile. The dark liner on his lower lash line was smudged.

“Why-- why were you singing that song?” Alice asked, hesitant.

Eliot’s brows drew together, but despite the dried tear tracks on his cheeks, he answered with his usual blithe tone, albeit taken down to a whisper. “Please. You don’t think my affection for eighties cinema is _exclusively_ restricted to Swayze, do you?”

Alice smiled in spite of the tears drying on her own cheeks, and made her way to stand beside him. Once there, she saw that the behemoth unicorn that Eliot had brought in the front door had been shrunken down to the size of a hummingbird, and was floating in loops and figure-eights around the mobile hooked to the edge of the crib. Lucy, quiet now, watched it, enraptured.

“She’s really something special,” Eliot said gently, watching Lucy blink milky blue eyes.

Alice felt the tears begin to clog her throat again, but she nodded.

After a moment, Eliot turned to face Alice. “I’m glad he finally told you,” he said. 

The tears, to Alice’s mortification, began to actually fall again at that. “ _God_ , why would you _want_ that,” she managed to get out around them, “when I’m the one that--”

Eliot sighed and brought her against her shoulder as easily as he had Lucy. “Oh, Quinn,” he said quietly into her probably greasy hair, “when are you going to accept that we’re on the same side here? He means-- _everything_ to me.” Eliot’s voice shook slightly but he kept going. “And your friendship is-- it’s good for him.”

“It’s _not_ ,” she insisted. She probably sounded petulant, but all she could think in response to Eliot’s words were all the ways she had _never_ been able to give Quentin what he wanted, or even to guess what that was-- from the carriage ride where he had wanted to win her back and she had just wanted an ice cream sundae, to the day in the park where she’d wanted to save his _life_ and he’d only wanted _Eliot_. “It never has been.”

She felt Eliot’s chin settle, hard and pointy, on the top of her head. 

“Well, I think it _can_ be,” he answered.

Later that night-- after Penny picked up Quentin and Eliot and Theo and took the little family back to Fillory, and after throwing two more shirts into the laundry when Theo spit up on them, and after Greg came through the portal with takeout Italian because _neither_ of them were up to even boiling water right now but he knew that spaghetti night always made her feel better, and after Alice showered and put on fresh pajamas and felt like more of a person again-- Alice stood in front of her dresser and thought again about Eliot’s words. They echoed in her mind as she opened the dresser’s narrow top drawer, where she kept the few pieces of jewelry she’d collected over the years. 

She reached her fingers toward the very back of the drawer, to the small mailing envelope that she knew was tucked behind her Grandma Quinn’s second-best pearls, the one that had arrived in her mailbox in Modesto years ago. She fished the little card out of the envelope first, with its bold looping handwriting, setting it down on the top of the dresser, beside her brush. Then she tipped the envelope carefully and let the cool metal inside slip into her palm. She looked at the delicate chain for a moment, and the pretty little pendant. She held it in her hand, then unclasped the chain, brought it around her neck, and let the key fall over her heart.

There was plenty she still didn’t know-- about herself, about magic and who should use it, about the Order and what it was planning. But at least she knew, somehow, as she brought her fingertips up to brush the sharp edges of the key’s teeth, that _this_ was exactly where the necklace belonged.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just one chapter left. You know what that means.
> 
> NEXT TIME: Reunited and it feels so goooood . . .


	9. IX. NOW

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alice and Theo bring back magic . . . and something else, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At last, we come to the end of this very winding road! But it's truly only the beginning for our characters. I can't tell you how much it's meant to me that you've joined me and these characters on this journey. I can only hope it's been a fraction as rewarding for you as it has been for me.

IX. NOW

_Midtown Manhattan, New York - July 2019_

When Alice opened her eyes again, it was with a gasp, as the empty walls of Kady’s clean room swam back into focus. She looked down at her hands. They were unlined again, with the nails painted black. 

But they were still the same hands. 

A _different_ hand, small but strong with wine-red nails, suddenly reached out and clawed onto Alice’s own. The fierce grip made Alice look back up. When she did, she saw Margo’s face, rigid and tense. Julia was sitting beside her, her expression softer and more visibly nervous. Kady, Alice realized, was kneeling at Alice’s side, and the grounding weight on Alice’s shoulder was _her_ firm hand.

“ _Alice_ ,” Margo demanded, voice unyielding, as if she might have already repeated herself a few times. “Did it _work_?”

Alice shut her eyes again, trying to make the fluid, dream-like memories of being in her future body settle. She took them one at a time, pinning each into its place in the sequence. She remembered her conversation with Eliot, and the way he’d held Quentin’s shirt in his lap, against his failing body. She remembered letting him lean his too-skinny frame against her side as they made their limping way across the bedroom toward the clock in the corner. She remembered the warm golden light that had poured out of the clock once she had inserted the key, and the way that Eliot had taken a long, slow look around the chaotic room before he stepped through, in case it was the last time. She remembered the way he had shocked her by kissing the top of her future self’s shorter hair as they stood there illuminated by the glowing clock, and the way he had shocked her not at all by saying _please take care of him_ , one more time, before he vanished into the light. 

After that, she remembered removing the key and bending it back to its disguised form. Calling for the guard posted at the end of the hall outside the bedroom. Making him see-- what he _needed_ to see, instead of three pillows pulled hastily from the back of the enormous pile on Quentin and Eliot’s bed. The last thing she remembered was a feeling like a string being pulled tight behind both of her temples, as she stood in the doorway of the bedroom, watching the guard carry away those three pillows in a sealed casket embellished with the same purple-red obsidian as the high king’s crown, which craftspeople had been quietly, tactfully preparing for weeks, out of the royal family’s sight.

Her eyes flew open.

“It worked,” she said, gulping in a breath and curling her hands into fists against her short pleated skirt. “Oh my God. I think it _worked_.”

_Whitespire Castle, Fillory - July 2047 [Earth-date equivalency]_

Alice and Lucy were both soaking wet and completely unconcerned as they sprinted up the dark, hidden stairwell that led from the banks of the secret sea back to the castle. 

Alice’s past self had been right about the spell Zelda had used to drain the reservoir. Together, she and Lucy had managed to put together a patch, heads bent over their favorite table on the third floor of the university’s library-- Lucy’s spiky black pixie cut and Alice’s demure blond bob, working in tandem. Once they’d each checked the other’s work ( _twice_ ), they’d gathered their notes and run for the campus portal, and hadn’t stopped running since. Not down the eight flights of twisting stairs between Whitespire’s end of the portal and the castle’s ground floor. Not down the uncounted, barely lit flights between the ground floor and the dried-up sea. Not when the spell-fix they had cast-- _together_ , both sets of blue eyes equally intent as they focused completely on the task before them-- had worked so well that the water refilled the empty basin in an instant, the waves of power that had been suppressed for so long cresting over the spot where Alice and Lucy stood on the shore and soaking them, making the love Alice carried for her daughter in every cell of her body spike, at the sound of the clear, loud giggle that she hadn’t heard from Lucy since she was nine years old, watching horses in the surf at Chincoteague Island, while Charlie investigated shells.

They still hadn’t stopped running, as they finally re-emerged from the dark stairwell back onto the castle’s main floor. It was a few hours until dawn, and the corridors were nearly empty, with no one to complain at these wild, _un_ -royal Children of Earth leaving puddles in the grooves of the stone floor. The pair didn’t see anyone at all until they crashed through the doors of the throne room to find Fen and Margo, each in their dressing gowns with their long hair unbound (Fen’s streaked with silver, Margo’s as untouched-- and spell-aided-- as Alice’s own), huddled in front of Fen’s empty throne.

“Oh, thank God. Finally some fucking answers,” Margo said when she saw Alice. “Listen up, Marian the Librarian,” she called, striding across the hall, the flaps of her robe-- which Alice couldn’t help but notice looked like a homage to if not a recreation of the red and black one that Eliot used to wear like a challenge, with nothing underneath, in the common room of the Physical Cottage-- flying behind her as she walked. “Is it true?”

Fen, who was clasping her more sedate white robe closed at the neck, followed at Margo’s elbow, fixing Alice with pleading eyes. “Theo told us that you and she--” Fen paused, looking daunted for a moment, before shaking her head and pushing forward. “Well, I don’t know everything she was saying, exactly. But that you had figured out something with time travel and memories, and there was a plan to replenish Fillory’s magic, and to get--”

She stopped again, her kind eyes filling, unable to voice the rest of the impossible hope. Unwilling to even imagine that it could be true. Alice could relate; she’d felt the same way just a couple of hours ago.

Margo, apparently, did not. 

“Theo said you could get magic back _and_ get Eliot back,” she said unflinchingly, the frown lines that had deepened over the last year and a half the only hint that this was anything but a standard business interrogation for her. “I can _feel_ that the magic’s back, so where the hell is--”

She cut herself off as the door behind Alice and Lucy slammed open again-- with enough force this time that the automatic latching spell that Quentin had created ( _his grief project_ , Margo had called it, with that same veneer of dismissiveness, _one of many_ ), triggered. Alice turned to face the sound and saw the heavy wooden door hovering to one side, leaving the arched doorway wide open. Quentin himself stood in the empty frame, a dark zippered sweatshirt thrown over his t-shirt and flannel pants.

“Have either of you seen Theo?” he was asking Margo and Fen, breathless, before he even stepped over the threshold. “I went to find her when the magic levels started going nuts, but she’s not in-- oh, Alice. Lucy. Um. Hi.” 

He skidded to a stop in front of Alice, looking between her and Lucy with-- not quite skepticism, but uncertainty. Alice noticed that the bags under his eyes were heavy and that there was fine white porcelain dust on the cuffs of his sweatshirt. Between those clues, and the fact that he’d apparently been awake enough to feel the surge in ambient magic but _hadn’t_ seen Theo storming into his bedroom carrying the time key, Alice gathered that he’d been spending the night in his workshop, instead of sleeping in he and Eliot’s big, half-empty bed-- _again_.

“Is everything-- _okay_ ?” he asked, his suspicion growing, as Alice, Lucy, Margo, and Fen continued to stare at him without speaking, each thinking (or, at least, _Alice_ thinking) about the fact that his life was-- _maybe_ \-- about to change forever, in the one way that he wanted more than anything but knew-- _believed_ \-- he couldn’t ever have again. 

“You guys are kind of freaking me out,” he said, his hooded eyes flitting from one woman to the next. A wave of-- _something_ , nausea, terror, realization, passed over his face when everyone continued to say nothing, making his skin go pale beneath his now-mostly gray beard. He swallowed, and his hands clenched at his sides. “Is it . . . _oh Jesus_ , is it Theo?” he asked.

Lucy responded the quickest. “ _No_ ,” she insisted, voice crisp and firm, reaching out to steady Quentin with a business-like hand on his shoulder.

_Library-mode_ , Alice realized, with a twist of something complicated and tender that felt a little like guilt and a little like pride, at seeing her not-so-little girl _care_ in the very same way that it had taken Alice so long to value in herself, even though it was the only kind of love Alice knew how to give.

“Theo is fine,” Lucy was saying to Quentin. “In fact, she and Mom--” she turned to look at Alice, with that trust that Alice remembered from when she was nothing but the soft little lump who would blink her always-curious eyes up at Alice until she fell asleep-- “they figured out how to fix Fillory’s magic,” she continued. “They’re the reason that the ambient is back.”

“Oh my God,” Quentin breathed, the tension on his face melting away. His eyebrows rose in a way that made him look more like the easily impressed grad student (easy for Alice, anyway) that Alice could still remember, even despite the beard and the shorter hair. “That’s incredible.”

“It’s because of Lucy, too,” Alice said, finding her voice again, taking over the conversation for her endlessly capable daughter-- because that was something that Alice could do, that she could _accomplish_ with all the feeling rushing through her. “Lucy wrote the spell that made it possible for Theo to get the answers that we needed. And she helped me cast the spell to fix what Zelda did.” 

“So, was Theo with the two of you, doing--?” Quentin finished the question with a gesture at their sopping wet clothes. “Did she need to change, or--”

Alice took a deep breath and met Margo and Fen’s eyes, before turning back to Quentin. She reached out with one of the hands that she’d been keeping curled tightly against her side and put it delicately on the wrist opposite the shoulder that Lucy was still holding. Because, it had taken decades, but Alice understood now that Quentin needed the comfort of affection, sometimes-- that for him, it wasn’t just a distraction from whatever was happening around him, but the thing that let him get _through_ what was happening. And while the person whose ready embraces he needed the most wasn’t here to give them ( _yet_ ), Alice was at a place in her own life now that she could offer her own careful version of that comfort. 

“There’s more to what Theo did than just bringing magic back,” she said, trying to project calm. “There’s-- another part, to her plan,” Alice explained, making Fen suppress a gasp and even Margo take a slow breath in through her nose. 

“O _kay_ ,” Quentin said, looking at Alice’s hand on his wrist, his eyebrows beginning to furrow again.

“She’s not in any kind of danger right now,” Alice said firmly, trying to keep him grounded in the present, out of the dark places in his head that were probably tempting him to think about what it would feel like to have to live without the love of his life ( _his lives_ ) _or_ their daughter. “She hasn’t even left the palace,” Alice continued. “But Q--”

She paused, her eyes pinching together behind her glasses. Theo hadn’t wanted to tell Quentin in advance, in case the plain failed; she hadn’t wanted to have to dash his hopes again if it all went wrong. But Alice was used to playing the heavy. And she wasn’t in the business of-- of deciding for herself what information other people got to access.

Not anymore.

“There’s something you need to know about what she _is_ doing,” Alice finally said. 

She didn’t get to say more than that, though, before Margo’s low, gutted _oh my God_ broke the moment.

Alice had been so focused on grounding Quentin that she hadn’t been paying attention to the two shapes that had stepped into the still-open doorway. At Margo’s exclamation, she looked up, just past Quentin’s shoulder, and _saw_ them. 

Theo, red-eyed and snotty, with tears streaming down her face into the corners of her wide, disbelieving smile. She held an old brass key in one hand, and in the other--

Alice’s heart stopped.

Theo’s _other_ hand was laced tightly with her _father’s_.

Beside her, Alice could hear Lucy draw in a sharp breath, at the same time that Fen made a wet choking sound, her hands coming up to cover her mouth. No one moved forward, though-- not even Margo, whose chin was quivering visibly, in spite of how tightly she was clenching her jaw shut. They were acting, each of them, like they were seeing a ghost and not a the real man, even though-- or maybe _because_ \-- Eliot was standing taller and steadier than he had since _years_ before he’d-- before they thought they’d lost him. If not for the gray at his temples, Alice might have guessed it was the thirty-year-old version she was seeing.

(His broad chest strong and steady as he’d held her like a baby, saying, _Oh, Quinn, when are you going to accept that we’re on the same side_?)

Quentin, whose back was still to the door, frowned at the shattered looks on the people facing him, and made to turn, to see what they were seeing. Alice tightened her grip on his wrist, at the same time that Lucy’s hand curled harder into his shoulder.

Quentin stopped, narrowing his eyes and peering into Alice’s, which she could feel were already swimming behind her glasses. He opened his mouth, probably to ask what the hell was _happening_.

But before any words came out, the ghost in the doorway proved that he wasn’t a ghost at all-- that no matter how impossible, he was the same Eliot they’d all always known. He gently let go of his daughter’s hand, so that he could step all the way into the room, hazel eyes brimming with more feeling than even _he_ could hide. He walked until he was just a few feet away from his partner and stopped again, hands twisting together, mouth wobbling, like _he_ was the one seeing a long-missed ghost.

Quentin still hadn’t turned around, but the line of his spine had gone rigid, like some part of him _knew_ , even without seeing.

Then the tears that had been threatening to fall from Eliot’s hazel eyes spilled over and he half-choked, half-sobbed a single, plaintive, worshipful word.

“ _Q_?”

The word-- the _voice_ \-- hit Quentin like the wave that had crashed over Alice and Lucy. She watched him curl in on himself as the recognition washed over him. He looked like he was trying to twist away from the dawning realization as much as he was trying to take it in, like he _wanted_ to let what he _had_ to assume was an impossible hope, doomed to disappointment, drag him under, but refused to let himself stop kicking. He squeezed his eyes shut, until they were just slits below the dark downward slashes of his eyebrows, and he chewed on his lips hard to keep any of the emotions that he was just barely keeping in check from bursting out. 

But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t hold back the lost, longing “ _Eliot_?” that sounded like it was torn from the center of his chest. 

“Theo, the other half of the spell,” Lucy said urgently, stepping back, just like Alice did, as Eliot crossed the few remaining feet and wrapped his arms tenderly around Quentin’s clenched shoulders.

Theo began casting instantly at Lucy’s instruction, even as she continued to sniff through her own tears, her hands shaking so badly she needed to stop and restart at one point. But Alice could see the moment that Quentin let himself _believe_ that the long arms circling his collar bones and the curling hair pressed to his temple and the _breathing chest_ against his back were all, truly, _Eliot_ ’s, and it was well before Theo reached her final tut. 

It was the moment that Quentin reached up to grab onto the rough, homespun sleeve of the shirt that Eliot was wearing, and let his head drop forward and finally _cry_ .

When Theo _did_ finish the spell a few moments later, and the memories came rushing back to Quentin-- _to all of them_ , he didn’t need to pull back, to actually _see_ all of Eliot, alive and well, to confirm anything. He just turned in Eliot’s arms and buried his face against Eliot’s chest, letting his shoulders shudder and heave.

The first time Alice had seen Eliot hold Quentin like this-- almost _exactly_ like this-- at Brakebills South, back when they were all so young that they were almost different people ( _except that no, they were always the same people, just more and less aware of what that meant_ ), she’d been struck by the way that Quentin, who had wanted so badly to be everyone’s hero, finally seemed to find peace while letting his _own_ hero tuck him close and carry him to the safety of a heart that was all his own. And that didn’t seem to hold any less true in this moment, as Quentin gasped and clutched at the loose tunic that at some point had replaced the rich pajamas that Alice, she remembered now, had sent Eliot through the clock wearing.

But _this_ time, other details stood out to her, too. Like the way that the fingers that Eliot was carding through Quentin’s hair weren’t soft _only_ to soothe Quentin, but also because they were shaking. And the way that Eliot had bent forward over Quentin’s shorter frame not _only_ so that he could press kiss after kiss into the whiskers that covered Quentin’s jaw, but also because he might not be able to keep himself upright any other way.

_And the way that Eliot’s voice had caught in his throat, thirty years ago, when he’d pulled Quentin against his chest in Kady’s old apartment, and said_ you’re _always_ my hero-- that’s the whole fucking point.

It was Eliot who broke their shaking embrace first, grabbing onto Quentin’s shoulders and pushing back just far enough that he could drink in Quentin’s awestruck face. His hands slid up to the sides of Quentin’s neck, never breaking contact, then curled against Quentin’s jaw. He held Quentin’s face in his hands for a long moment, thumbs stroking over the tears that had fallen into Quentin’s beard, and smiled, diaphanous and tender, like Quentin was too good to be true. 

“You’re okay,” he finally said, still smiling softly. 

Quentin raised one hand to dry his eyes with the cuff of his hoodie. Alice didn’t know Quentin’s wardrobe well enough to know if it was the same black hoodie that Eliot had cradled against himself when he’d thought the end was coming, but she _believed_ , in her heart, that it was. 

“ _I’m_ okay?!” Quentin said, wiping roughly at the tears on his cheeks. “I’m not the one who fucking-- came back from the _dead_ , El.”

Eliot tipped his head to one side at the familiar nickname, the fingers still resting against Quentin’s face scritching lightly. “Reports of my demise--” he started, cutting himself off with another smile when Quentin gave him a look and said, “Shut up. Don’t you dare.”

Quentin sighed, then, and brought his own hands up to smooth back the hair at Eliot’s temple, inspecting his partner, proving that he was, in fact, whole and okay and _alive_.

“I think I might have gone grayer in the past year,” Eliot said nervously in response to Quentin’s scrutiny, with a small wince that Alice would bet was only partially put on. “Conditions at our old cabin were-- not exactly luxurious, as I have been recently reminded.”

Quentin just hummed and brought one hand back down to tug gently at the collar of Eliot’s plain-- for him-- burgundy tunic. “I thought I recognized this,” he said, before adding, “You look perfect and you know it.”

Eliot rested their foreheads together and let the backs of his long fingers brush over Quentin’s jaw, from ear to ear. “I thought maybe you’d shave this while I was gone,” he said. “Some kind of a grief offering.”

Quentin’s eyes went baleful-- or as baleful as they could, while he looked like he couldn’t decide which inch of Eliot’s face he most wanted to soak in.

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Eliot admitted, barely a whisper. His roving fingers stilled, then, and he bit his lip before asking, “You really are-- _okay_ , though? You’ve been . . .”

He trailed off and Quentin sighed, sliding the hand still on Eliot collar around to grip the back of his neck. “Yeah, motherfucker,” he said, infusing the expletive with so much tenderness that Alice felt a tear slip down from behind her glasses, “I have.” 

It might have been the callback to the promise that Eliot had extracted from Quentin in front of Alice and Theo in the Physical Cottage that they were only just now remembering, or the feeling of Quentin’s strong fingers scratching through the short curls at the nape of Eliot’s neck, or maybe a combination of the two, that caused Eliot’s own face to crumple, then. Quentin pulled Eliot into his arms as surely as Eliot had pulled Quentin into his own, stroking firmly up and down Eliot’s back as it hitched.

Eliot pulled himself together more quickly than Quentin had. After just a few moments, he stood back with a shuddering breath, and holding himself at arm’s length, met Quentin’s eyes to say, “Baby, I know that I fucked up sending you away--”

“No shit,” Quentin interjected, folding his arms across his chest, even though his eyes on Eliot’s face were still warm and adoring.

“I wanted to _protect_ you,” Eliot explained, “After the way it happened at the mosaic. And I know you-- you-- I didn’t want you to have to--”

“I _know_ ,” Quentin interrupted again. “Do you really think I don’t know you well enough at this point to see through your dumbass ruses? Or to know that your whole, _don't-be-a-martyr_ bullshit only ever goes one way?”

Eliot let out an uncharacteristically inelegant, sobbing laugh at that, and tried to surreptitiously bring his sleeve up to wipe his eyes. After a quick sniffle, he pressed his lips together and cut his eyes, unexpectedly, to Alice. 

Alice breath caught in her throat, to see that look again, the one that said co-conspirators, and _on the same side_ , and-- and _friends_.

“It was brought to my attention in the not-so-distant past,” he said, quirking one corner of his mouth into a smile that Alice couldn’t help but return, “that the important thing isn’t what we’ve done wrong, but what we do _next_.” He turned back to Quentin, then, reaching for his hands and pulling him in. “While my insistence on playing the martyr did, in retrospect, literally save my life this time,” he said, with a bluster so feigned that Quentin didn’t even bother to roll his eyes at it, “I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, and I’ve decided that next time around, fuck it-- I’m being selfish.” 

Quentin took another step closer, so that their chests were nearly touching. “Yeah?”

Eliot nodded. “If I haven’t run you off by then, then, honeybear, I _want_ you by my side, no matter what’s happening. If you tell me that you want to be there, to hold my hand while I whine probably an _appalling_ amount, then-- then I’ll trust you.”

Quentin leaned up then and kissed Eliot on the mouth, sweet but _hard_ , letting go of Eliot’s hands to wrap his own around the back of Eliot's neck. When they eventually pulled apart, they both had tears in their eyes.

“So, so we have a date then?” Eliot asked, with a laugh that Alice thought was mostly to cover the fresh round of tears. “In, let’s say--”

“Fifty years,” Quentin finished for him, that magical refrain lighting something in Alice’s chest, that made her reach for the thin silver band on the third finger of her left hand, twirling it slowly in its endless circle.

Eliot raised his eyebrows at his partner. “I feel compelled to point out that we’ve already used about thirty of our allotted years.”

But Quentin was shaking his head. “When are you going to get it through your head, El?” he asked, his voice softer than his words. “When it comes to you, I’m _always_ going to want fifty more.”

Eliot’s eyes filled again at that, but before the two men could fall into each other’s arms again, Margo was pushing forward and launching herself against Eliot, her patience evidently at an end.

“Okay, enough of the Romeo-and-Romeo schtick,” she said, nose already pressed into Eliot’s ribcage. She shot a stern glare at Quentin who was already moving to one side and tucking himself under Eliot’s left arm to make room. “You’ve monopolized him long enough,” she huffed-- then seemed to shock everyone, including herself, by _not_ taking Eliot’s entire right side for herself, but instead reaching back instinctively for Fen and pulling her forward so that they could both wrap their arms around Eliot and each other.

Eliot tightened his arms around the three people that were his each his life partners in their own ways. The disbelieving, _how-did-I-get-this_ look in his eyes as he gazed down on all three-- none of whom reached higher than his shoulder-- was familiar enough to Alice that it made her chest throb. It also made her suddenly curious as to where her daughter, one of the people that _Alice_ couldn’t believe she had gotten, was-- and where Eliot’s daughter was, too, for that matter.

She got her answer to both questions mid-way through her survey of the room, when she saw that Lucy and Theo had discreetly snuck away from Quentin and Eliot’s tender reunion scene to have their own hushed conversation at the edge of the dais that held the throne that would be Theo’s some day. Alice guessed, from the abashed look on Theo’s face and the way that Lucy had her watch-covered arms crossed tightly across her chest, that their conversation _also_ involved several apologies for high-handed efforts to protect the people that one loved.

Alice _didn’t_ guess the additional similarities it would bear to Quentin and Eliot’s conversation, however-- not until Lucy threw her arms up in frustration, then leaned in and pulled Theo’s face to her own.

“ _Oh_ ,” Alice said, out loud, when Theo’s hands froze in the middle of a careless gesture, then reached out blindly to tangle in Lucy’s dripping-wet hair, the studded watch on Theo’s wrist a perfect partner to Lucy’s own.

At Alice’s exclamation, Eliot, Quentin, Margo, and Fen each looked up. 

Eliot saw what had caught Alice unawares first. Once he did, his face broke into an entirely too pleased grin. “I _knew_ it,” he said. 

Quentin, who was still tucked into Eliot’s left side let out a weary sigh-- not so much out of displeasure, Alice thought, but out of his general wariness for anything that proved Eliot’s more imperious instincts correct.

Fen pulled away from Eliot so that she could put both hands over her heart, letting out a happy coo at the sight of the two young women.

“Don’t start on seating arrangements yet,” Margo said coolly, even as she put an arm around Fen’s waist and deigned to let the High King hook her chin over Margo’s satin-covered shoulder. “Those two are so fucking headstrong, they’ll be broken up before sunrise.”

“Now, now, Bambi,” Eliot said, as he sidled over toward Alice and dropped his right arm around her shoulder, his left still curled around Quentin. “Not in front of the in-laws.”

The weight of Eliot’s arm across her shoulder was a surprising comfort to Alice-- _not_ , as she might have guessed when she was in her twenties, because she was surprised to find _any_ comfort in Eliot, but because she was surprised by _how much_ of a comfort it was, and by how much she had unwittingly missed it, even when she had tried so hard not to let herself think of it at all.

She swallowed down the sudden sting in her throat, and kept her eyes on the pair across the room when she asked, “Did you really know about this?”

“I have eyes,” Eliot answered noncommittally. He looked down at Alice and frowned slightly, squeezing the arm around her shoulders. “Do you disapprove?”

Alice shook her head. “No. But I am a little bit worried they’re going to blow up the world,” she said honestly. 

Eliot smiled at that, but he shook his own head. “Lucy will keep Theo in line.” He looked down at Quentin again, then at Alice, and hesitated before adding, “It’s kind of nice. It’s like-- some parts of the two of you were meant to be together after all.”

Alice opened her mouth to protest Eliot’s continuing fixation on she and Quentin’s romantic past. But when she looked up at him, he didn’t look like he was teasing, or torturing himself with the persistent fantasy that he was somehow Quentin’s second choice. He looked like the idea made him-- _happy_. And when she looked over to Quentin, he didn’t look disgusted by the thought, either.

All the same, she would never entirely stop being _Alice Knows Best_ , and so she couldn’t help snorting softly. “By that logic,” she pointed out, more gently than she would have once, “it could just as easily be-- Fen and Greg, who were meant to be together.” She paused to bite her lip, and looked away from Eliot shyly as she added, “Or-- or you and me.”

Eliot squeezed her shoulder then, and she looked up at him, out of the corner of her eye. “We do all right together, Quinn,” he said softly, dropping a kiss to her wet hair. 

Alice nodded, swallowing tightly around the lump in her throat, until she felt it clear. “I should-- um, get back to Modesto,” she said, not quite as crisply as she tried.

Eliot only smiled. “Give Greg my best,” he said, with a smirk that devolved into a yelp when Quentin pinched his side, hard, before reaching out for Alice’s hand and holding it in both of his. Quentin didn’t say anything (maybe _couldn’t_ say anything), just brought the hand to his mouth and kissed it with gratitude that Alice could _feel_ , even around the humming in her chest. Then he dropped it, and melted back into Eliot’s arms.

Alice smiled at them both and turned to go. She thought about saying goodbye to Lucy first, or saying thank you, or saying _you are my baby--you and Charlie, both-- and you are already so much better than I’ll ever be_. But she decided, as she averted her eyes from where Theo was now clambering into Lucy’s lap, that all of those sentiments would wait for another day. 

They all had other days now, after all.

Alice was out of the throne room and halfway down the hall toward the spire that held the portal back to Modesto and Greg and _home_ , when she heard footsteps on the stone behind her. She turned around and there was Eliot, again-- alone this time.

She frowned immediately, ready to spring into action, ready to figure out what was wrong. But he held up a hand and gave an embarrassed smile. 

“Nothing’s wrong, Madame Chief Librarian. The thought just occurred,” he said, clearing his throat, “that in all the excitement, I might have forgotten-- to thank you.”

“For saving your life?” Alice asked, with a small smirk of her own.

“For that, yes,” he said, nodding. He looked down at his feet then back up at Alice, his eyes misty again. “And also, _ah_ , for keeping your promise. For taking care of him.”

Alice opened her mouth to demur, thinking guiltily of the months immediately after Eliot’s-- well, after his _presumed_ death, when she’d felt so lost over how to help Quentin, even as Fen and Julia and even Theo seemed to know instinctively how to hold his hand and pet his hair and let him cry. But then she thought of the months after _that_ , after Theo had told her to talk to him. She thought about the tricky-case book repairs she’d brought to his workshop, just a couple at first, then a steady stream. She thought of the glass rabbit ( _not the butterfly-- she couldn’t quite risk that one_ ) that she’d shattered against her desktop, just for an excuse to see him and give him a project, during one week that, miraculously, no rare or delicate books came unglued. 

And she thought about everything that she and Lucy and Theo had done tonight to make sure that Quentin got back the thing that he needed most of all. And all the things she’d done thirty years ago, before she’d even realized that this-- 

This was her _family_.

"I'm surprised that Quentin let you out of his sight," Alice said, instead of expressing any of that out loud-- or maybe just, as her _way_ of expressing some part of that out loud.

Eliot's answering smile was soft and lovely, like it was every time someone said 'Quentin' in his presence-- like it maybe always would be, no matter how many decades the two ultimately got to share. "Well," he said, "Theo made the mistake of coming up from Lucy's _face_ for air, and that was all the opening that Q needed to step all over our girls' big romantic moment to play weepy papa bear. He won't be letting go anytime soon."

"And you didn't want in on that?" Alice returned with a half-smile of her own.

Eliot's eyes went sheepish. "There may have already been some bear-hugging when I came through the clock," he allowed. "It's--" he stopped himself, pressing his lips together. "I know it's only been a year and a half, but she looks so much _older_."

Alice swallowed hard, all the hurt and the regret and the loss of the past year and change bubbling up. "It's been-- a hard year and a half," she finally managed to say.

Eliot was looking at her with open concern. “Greg will take care of you when you get home, won’t he?” Before Alice could raise an eyebrow, he raised both hands as if in surrender-- and it would take some getting used to, seeing him move so gracefully and freely again. “I don’t mean anything untoward-- _this time_. I just meant-- you’ve had a long day. You deserve a soft place to land.”

Alice thought of the way that Quentin and Eliot had traded off cradling the other. Her younger self, the one whose memories she’d just gotten back, wouldn’t have believed that _she_ deserved something like that. 

She’d grown a lot since then.

“He will,” she told Eliot honestly. Then she smiled-- her _own_ small, soft, embarrassing smile. “It’s spaghetti night.”

Eliot nodded once, sharply, his face going neutral and wry again. 

“Well, far be it from me to keep someone from inadvisable carbohydrates,” he said, before adding, with more vulnerability, “But-- you should come by for a visit soon. Theo said your necklace broke. Q can mend it for you.”

Alice smiled at the way Eliot’s whole face still lit up at that one little letter, even after all these years. 

She nodded. “He’s good at that.”

“He is,” Eliot agreed, his heart still in his eyes. Then he tossed his head casually and added, “You should bring Greg. I’ll make daiquiris.” 

Alice nodded again. She turned to go, adjusting her dress where it was drying clammily against her skin. But before she was all the way around, she turned back, biting her lip. “There’s one thing that’s been bothering me, since Theo gave our memories back,” she said.

Eliot tilted his head curiously, and Alice thought back to the last minutes back on the day Theo had visited them all in 2019, before Theo had returned to-- to today, to their present--

_Midtown Manhattan, New York - 2019_

Alice was standing at the railing of Kady’s balcony, avoiding the apartment’s living space, where Quentin, Eliot, and Theo were soaking up their last moments together before Penny started travelling everyone back to their homes before Theo’s twenty-four hours ran and their memories of the past day were erased. The lights of the city against the charcoal buildings and the black sky were striking, objectively speaking, but Alice was surprised to find that she was actually missing the view from the concrete pad behind the little house in Modesto, the mostly-empty grassy space before the trees at the edge of the property began. It could make a nice patio one day, she thought.

The sliding door opened behind her, and she turned, expecting to see Penny ready to take her back. She startled when she saw Eliot instead. 

He slid the door shut behind him, then cast a glance over his shoulder toward the living room. “Penny says you’re up in two,” he said. 

Alice nodded and moved to edge past him, but stopped with her hand on the latch. Through the glass door, she could see the sitting area of apartment, where Quentin had gathered his future daughter into his arms, her dark, curly head tucked under his chin even though she was taller than him. He was stroking a hand up and down her back, but his eyes were locked on Eliot, standing against the balcony’s railing. Alice noticed, for the first time, that he had pulled a hooded sweatshirt over his button-down shirt, before they’d left Brakebills. It was black, with fading cuffs.

The sight filled her with a sense of loss-- but not her own, this time. The loss that Quentin would feel, and Eliot, too, if something went wrong with her plan between this moment and thirty years from now.

Alice turned her head to the side, speaking mostly to the concrete ledge, but knowing that Eliot could hear her.

“I’m glad he has you,” she said, hiding her hands in the folds of her skirt. “I hope-- I hope this all works.”

Eliot said nothing for a moment, and she moved to open the door, trying to ignore the embarrassed blush rising in her cheeks at saying something so stupidly sentimental to someone who wasn’t even really her friend-- regardless of what would happen decades in the future. But his voice stilled her hand.

“Have you decided what you’re going to do with the necklace?”

She turned to face him at the seeming non-sequitur, expecting to find-- teasing, maybe. Or disinterest. But instead his gaze was considering and oddly-- _gentle_.

She reached up unconsciously for the necklace that she’d hung around her neck, after masking the time key into the shape she remembered from the future and slipping it onto an old chain that Marina had left in the apartment when Kady took over. “I was going to put it in with my jewelry when I get--” _home_ \-- “to Modesto,” she corrected. “I guess we just have to hope that I’ll actually choose to wear it the day that I end up going to visit you in Fillory.” 

Eliot didn’t answer, didn’t nod, didn’t react at all. After a long, still moment though, he held out his hand. “I have another idea,” he said. “Do you trust me?”

_Whitespire Castle, Fillory - July 2047 [Earth date equivalency]_

“How did you know?” Alice asked Eliot, fingers still moving instinctively to play with the missing pendant, that wasn’t around her neck for the first time in decades. “How did you know that I’d wear it that day, if _you_ were the one who sent it to me?”

Eliot’s hair was grayer now, and his face was lined-- just like hers was. But that considering, gentle look in his eyes was just the same. 

“I knew if it was a gift from us, you’d wear it _every_ day,” he said simply.

“You couldn’t have known that,” she said, even as her eyes filled for the seventh or eighth time that night.

“I knew you loved Q,” he said with a shrug. “. . . and that you’d get there with me.” 

Alice snorted at that, but her lips quivered. “I was kind of screwed up back then,” she said.

“Whereas I was the portrait of stability,” he countered.

“I _did_ get there with you,” Alice said after a moment, deciding to let the tears fall as she said it. “Just-- in case I haven’t mentioned that before.”

Eliot sighed and brought his hands up to frame her cheeks, looking down the way she’d seen him do with Margo a thousand times. “I know that, Quinn,” he said. “But I think the more important thing is that you got there with _you_.”

  
  


_Modesto, California - August 2019_

The temporary portal that Alice's Brakebills alumni key opened dropped her off just down the street from Sheila’s mom’s house-- or, rather, from Alice’s house, now. Probably. 

As she made her way down the street to her-- _home_ , she turned over Henry’s offer in her mind. Maintaining the university’s library. It was-- tempting. Not just because it was something to do-- something other than sitting around the little house obsessing over the Order, and over all the things that she was too much of a ( _stupid little mouse_ )-- well, that she wasn’t going to do. But also because--

( _M_ _iss Wicker has joined the staff recently_ , Fogg had said, in that way that was either supposed to be revelatory or just self-important. _Mr. Coldwater has been spending quite a lot of time here, as well_.)

The neighborhood kids were playing in the hydrant across the street today, and it made her smile. She nodded at them, probably awkwardly, before she turned up the walk to the house. The mail had come, and she scooped it out of the box before turning the key in the front door.

She set the pile of mail down on the little table inside the front door, next to the glass of water that had been sitting on the table for about a week. She couldn’t remember when she’d put the glass there, but given how shitty the ambient still was, she had decided it didn’t hurt to leave it there, to have at the ready. Just in case.

She toed off the heels she’d worn to the meeting with Henry, getting ready to head to the kitchen for another cereal dinner. She could sort through the mail later. But the sight of one envelope stood out from the rest, making her pause. It was larger than the others, postmarked from from New York City, a week ago. The writing on the front was in bold calligraphy that seemed familiar to her, although she couldn’t quite place it.

The most important thing, though, was that-- unlike the circulars and the anonymous credit card applications and the utility bills that were still addressed to Sheila-- this one had _her name_ on the front.

Alice picked up the envelope carefully, registering a swish of something small and solid inside. She ran her finger over her name on the manila paper-- Alice Quinn; Modesto, California.

Then she turned the envelope over.

And opened it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, thank you, thank you for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> MAJOR SPOILERS RE CHARACTER DEATH:  
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> For those who want the spoilers up front, when the story starts, the characters believe that Eliot has died shortly before the events that send he and Quentin's daughter into the past. Through a series of plans that rely on time-travel, illusion magic, and outright sleight-of-hand, it turns out that he is not, in fact, actually dead. By the end of the story, he is back with his family, where he belongs.


End file.
